Since we took in a quintet of rescued bantams last year we have had on/off outbreaks of scaly leg. I always treat with the scabies ointment from the chemist and find this kills the blighters straight away. I usually follow this with regular vaseline smearing to get the scales back to condition afterwards. This method has always worked really well.

 

Last week I noticed that our gold silkie hen was limping on one leg. She has not been laying but I put this down to bad weather and moulting. One of her legs had really quite bad scaley leg with the two small toes (4th and 5th) covered in white crusts and really quite disfigured.

 

I applied the scabies lotion and left her overnight for it to soak in. The next day the scales had come right away - she must have caught the foot or picked them away somehow. The two smallest toes were literally down to the flesh and bone for a section with no skin at all.

 

The poor hen had a really hot leg and it looked like she was never going to get over it. David and I were literally weighing up the options of killing her or trying to tie off the toes with a torniquet to amputate them. As she looked so well in herself we have had her in the house in a clean cage and bathed her whole leg with iodene solution twice a day for the week and thankfully have seen a steady improvement.

 

The toes with no skin seem to have crusted over and look clean. She has put weight on and this morning (at approximatly 6am as it woke us up!) she laid an egg! So she must be better.

 

Needless to say every other chuck has been treated for scaley leg syptoms or not - and I think it would be worth incorporating this as a regular preventative treatment.

I made two batches of summer fruits wine at the end of the summer - with the second batch re-using the same fruits to get the most out of them. I was doing a bit of a sort out outside and found a full fermentation barrel - evidently full of the second batch still fruit and all.

I think this got put outside the back door out of the way for a dinner party at some point and never made it back in.

I thought I would be tipping it all away as nearly 7 months on the fruit should never work should it? I tried a little and wow!

 

It has made a rich fruity pink liquer consistency. It is sweet but very alocoholic tasting - probably because the natural sugars from fruit have fermented as well as the full quantity of added sugar. I siphoned off 3 and a half demijohns worth and it is crystal clear. Will let them stand for a  little while and taste again to see if it still ok but I am imagining it served as a ’summer fruit spritzer’ with tonic water and ice cubes!!

See - it will be up there alongside penicillin etc as a ‘happy accident’ discovery

When I was little I went to a country fayre and was mesmerised by a stall selling live quail. My sister and I begged our parents to let us have a pair as pets but were horrified when my dad said yes as long as we could have them for dinner…

Now here I am branching out into quail! Not just as the cute little pets but as the highly productive egg layers and easy to rear meat birds that they are.

We have a fairly sizeable coop (formerly a large rabbit house that was aquired via freecycle) and run in a sheltered spot just outside the back door. In it we have two males and five females from three different sources so as to have a good blood mix for breeding.

They are gorgeous little things that I would highly reccomend to anyone. Little therapeutic scrurrying things making funny frog noises. Absolutely no loud crowing from the boys!

They have not laid so far due to the short days but we have started in the last couple of weeks to notice a change in their behaviour. They are starting to form out little hollows in the straw bedding and sit in them. They seem to play a game where they all pile in and the smallest boy runs and jumps on them.

Hopefully we will be seeing some eggs soon!

By the end of last season, we had put a smaller coop inside our large coop and run with all our growers in it. This was forced for extra protection from foxes/kids/theives (culprit never exactly determined!)

However, we noticed that that the birds grew used to each other through the wire and we were even able to integrate cockerels together by doing this. 

We have tried every method of integrating chickens in the past from rubbing them with garlic to putting them together at night only to find bloodshed in the morning. This has been by far the most successful way and we will continue this method this year - at least the chickens will be grateful not to stink of garlic!

We went to collect a new cockerel for breeding purposes last week.

He is a beautiful bantam black/gold araucana. He has great head feathering and will make a great pair with our bantam balck araucana hen.

We also have two cross bred hens that lay green/blue eggs that are in with him at the moment.

It is difficult to know what to do about breeding with this set though as it is one of the cross-bred hens that lays the best pure blue coloured egg. Her father is our gold silkie cockerel and her mother is ‘Treacle’ our rescued heinz 52 chicken who must be half Araucana. Do we breed to get purest genes or chase the perfect egg colour??

Whatever we do the chicks will be gorgeous with such a handsome father and they will definately lay blue/green eggs as this gene is dominant. May try a mixed batch in the incubator after the current lot are done to see what happens.

I have ordered a new brooder from the internet for when the chicks hatch. It is a large indoor rabbit cage with a stand. However, it looks great for the purpose of bringing on chicks whilst they are still on the heat.

The base is plastic which will be easy to sanitise between hatchings and the bars will stop escapees. Previously we have used various home made things as brooders - most recently a shelf unit on its back with shelves removed. However, pitfalls of spilt water soaking through, having to use pea netting top stop escapees and general difficulty to clean have spurred me into the new purchase.

Will post some pictures when it arrives and we have our chicks in it.

We have 12 eggs in the incubator - 6 bantam light sussex and 6 gold silkies.

I am very excited about both types. The light sussex will add a new breed to our flock. The gold silkie eggs are from very high quality blood lines that will allow us to interbreed with our existing silkies.

Fertility rates are looking good when I candled them at day seven so fingers crossed for the due date!

We have just got back from holiday to bad news from the neighbour looking after our chickens. The small coop at the allotment with all our growers in from this years hatchings was found open this morning with not a single one anywhere to be seen. All of our last three months of work to add pure bred bantams to increase our laying flock has just gone! We have no idea how it happened, but someone with opposable thumbs must have been involved - there is no way an animal could get into that coop without some assitance!

We went up to check it out and after a good 10 minutes of looking round for signs of feathers etc I saw a rustling near the coop. There was one welsummer bantam inside a bucket next to the coop looking very dazed. We caught it and it looks ok - no obvious injuries but definately looks like it has been in something’s mouth due to feather loss and feathers stuck together with drool. Unfortunately it looks like a male and no others were to be seen.

To continue the disaster, our neighbour had removed the six eggs that our silkie had been sitting on for 10 days already (despite being told twice and having a note from us saying that she was sitting and didn’t need anything doing). Obviously thinking he was doing the right thing, he put them in our egg basket for us. Good job we realised before we cracked one! Poor things - another set back as they were destined to add to our laying flock too.

 

We are now back to square one minus three months! Will go back up to the allotment in a bit to check if any other grower chicks came home for the evening to roost, but I am not holding my breath.

We used a wine filter for the first time with one gallon of our summer fruits wine last week. The results were amazing - the wine really is crystal clear. I know that is probably stating the obvious but it really made the finished wine look professional. I have never bothered filtering our homemade wine before as I thought it would be time consuming and fiddly to do - but it ran through really quickly. The only thing was that I didn’t put a tube with a tap on the air outlet so i ended up sitting there with my thumb over it to stop wine spurting everywhere! Other than that it was an absolute doddle to use - I am very impressed!!

Our silkie hen has been broody for the last week and looks very set, even though she has not been sitting on anything. The last couple of times we have tried to give her eggs when she has gone broody, she has abandoned them after a couple of days, so we left her longer this time to make sure she was serious about it.

I just took her out two of her own eggs and three of our blue eggs from Treacle, the hybrid allotment chicken. I took her off the nest and put her down on the floor of the coop to rebuild the nest with a bit more straw. When I went to get the eggs and her to put back in the nest, she was busy sticking her neck out and sneakily pulling the eggs under herself one by one! Evidently she really wanted some eggs to sit on!!

We are hoping that any female offspring from the green eggs will also lay green eggs and that they could go in with our laying flock at the allotment. However, their mother is such a heinz variety chicken and their father is also a cross, so who knows what will come out?

Chicks due Thursday 17th July!! (provided she sits nicely - fingers crossed)