All change

We moved all the chickens to the 2nd field today into a fruit cage - the idea is that they can become a bit more free ranging in a week or so - being let out of the cage to potter about in the long grass during the day and returning to safety of their house at night.

In the short term the netted cage will also stop the buzzard and Minou attacking this gorgeous fluffy chick while still allowing it to socialise with the rest of the hens. As you can see it is still very much with its two "mothers".



Cuddles our rabbit who thinks it is a chicken cannot accompany them to their summer housing - he would just disappear off into the wild I think - so he is now in the old chicken ark awaiting an intense re-socialising programme to get him used to being petted again. Then, when we get the new guinea pigs (soft touch Mummy!) he may or may not be housed with them depending on whether they all get on without fighting.

We have just been outside watching a woodpecker (greater spotted we think) feeding on the peanut rings - he was frightened off by the sound of the zoom lens so we don't have a photo but shall lie in wait over the next week.

Updating the website

This afternoon has been drizzly so I have finally put down my hoe and got around to updating some things on the website. I have put up a few more of my Mum's ever popular chicken paintings - these cost about £2.00 to pack and post, and they are ideal for chicken lovers. She is busy working on paintings for a series of exhibitions in East Lothian so I suspect that these are going to be all I can manage to prise of her for the next month or so.

This photo is of Treela, an Isla Brown and our cheekiest chicken. Today I found her in our bathroom, perched on the side of the bath. Neither cats no dogs bother her at all when she is in the house.

I also finished the felted/embroidered cushions and put together some kits.

I have loved making these cushions - they are the ideal work to do in the evenings either outside watching the sunset or inside watching the t.v. The cushions have turned out even better than I thought they would - I was determined not to produce anything that looked like anybody else's, I wanted to make something that looked vintage but not derivative. I hope that I have succeeded. I am not going to be able to produce many though so they are strictly limited editions.

New Chick

The other excitement on my birthday was the arrival of this little yellow ball of fluff. Unfortunately it was the only one of the eggs that hatched and the rest seem to have been infertile. I am also unsure about what type it is - one bantam and one normal egg have disappeared and there were no shell traces to identify which egg hatched. We shall have to wait and see.

To be honest I am quite glad that we didn't have a mass hatching - I love the whole waiting to see thing and we don't want too many hens - if we could increase our wee flock by 1 or 2 a year that would probably be ideal. We don't rely on selling eggs or hens and they are a kind of garden pet, so it also nice to be able to identify each one individually.

It also stops there being any gender problems - we don't have a cockerel at the moment and are happy to have one so it doesn't matter which sex the ball of fluff is - However we would not have been able to keep 2, 3 or 4 cockerels and would have had to dispatch them sooner rather than later as they are not a meat variety. There isn't a great demand for cockerels as everyone has spares. It isn't a position I relish and is the only down side to hatching.

I have just moved the chick into our ark so that it can venture outside without the dangers of crows or cats carting it off. I have put the 2 broody marans in with it as they seem to be taking turns in chick minding anyway. This morning my stomach lurched as I couldn't find it under the hen that hatched it - fortunately I heard the cheep cheep cheep coming from under the broody hen in the other corner.

This evening I shall tell Katie that it has been born - she will want to handle it and a 3 day chick is a lot more robust than a 1 day chick.

Just what I always wanted . . .

We do not live on a smallholding and we do not have any pretensions to be self-sufficient. We are not living "The Good Life" but we do grow (some of) our own vegetables and we do keep chickens and ducks. At some point in the future we shall have pigs and a proper coppice. It is very much the lifestyle that I envisaged when we were living in a Glasgow tenement about a decade ago.

In my mid 20s I found that a fibroid was growing attached to my womb and I had to have an operation to have the fibroid removed. Before the operation I was given a consent form to sign should a hysterectomy prove necessary.

Thanks to good luck and the skill of my consultant (who saw me through 2 subsequent pregnancies) the operation went fine but it meant that Euan and I, not long married, had to have a serious "what if we can't have children?" conversation.

The one thing that stood out was that, if we couldn't have children of our own, then I wanted to move to the country and keep chickens and pigs and foster. Everything was fine in the end but it was a vision which stuck. By the time I was pregnant with Zoe we had moved out to the Kilpatrick Braes and as soon as I was no longer working in Glasagow we moved further out to Stirlingshire. We got the chickens and ducks.

The bit that I enjoy best is breeding from the chickens - Peblo, our fantastic freeranger, is broody at the moment so we have acquired some fertile eggs for her to sit on. 6 are a mixed lot from Jane and Craig at Craigievern and 6 are bantam eggs I bid for on ebay (Craig is very dubious). The lower photo is of Peblo with "her" chick Windixie born last year.

16 days to go.

Peblo v. Jasmine - an update

This photo is of Peblo, survivor of the fox attack, frequent flier, and determined free ranger.

Up until Tuesday, Peblo would shriek and squawk when she met Jasmine - running around like a particularly interesting feathery ball - with dog in pursuit until I rescued her.

On Tuesday I was on the telephone and didn't get out there as quickly as usual. Peblo, fed up with the chase, stopped, turned on Jasmine and pecked her sharply on the nose. Now Jasmine is largely ignoring her- chicken, what chicken? - she is obviously not used to being attacked by her toys.

I suspect it will not last so I have bought a copy of The Practical Dog Whisperer as suggested and so far I am very impressed by the simplicity and humanity of the approach. I will report back

Chicken and dog problem - advice please

Right from the beginning I have had a clear vision of what our garden will become - what looks like sticks in a field to everyone else are, to me, stately hornbeam hedges flanking paths, what is a bit of a dip in a swampy copse is, to me, an amphitheatre seating area surrounded by coloured dogwoods. And so on . . .come back in ten years.

An important part of this vision is free ranging chickens. On a visit to Sarah Raven's garden at Perch Hill Farm in East Sussex I saw a clutch of bantam eggs amongst the cabbages - and that is what I want.

But we have made a grave mistake in the plan.

We used to have free ranging chickens. Our first flock lived in houses at the top of the field. They had the run of the place and were blissfully happy, following me round and rooting for worms. Blissfully happy, that is until all but one were eaten by a rampaging pack of young foxes which struck just before dusk.

So, fearful for the safety of the one remaining and intent on getting more chickens, we built a chicken run near to the house and this is where they have been living. They are happy enough I suppose but it isn't the same life at all and though the run is large - about 4m x 6m - they quickly turn it into mud.

During the year that the chickens have been in the run we bought a dog. Jasmine, scruffy unclipped miniature schnauzer, is wonderful, affectionate, an indispensable part of the family. And a chicken chaser. She doesn't bite them - if they stop running she'd not quite sure why the game has stopped - but they don't know that she won't snap their heads off and I don't know that they won't have heart attacks.

As the chickens are in the run it is only when they fly over the netting that they meet Jasmine. But ideally I would like to give them back their freedom, let them pootle about the garden on their own.

Does anyone have any suggestions - do you think it is too late to try and train our mutt?

Today we are Scotland on Sunday newspaper's "Healthy Planet Tip of the Week".