Another Roast Chicken

Brown cockerel, on the left, the last of the random cockerels that Danny accumulated for free, has now gone to chicken heaven -- or should I say Danny and Jessica's stomachs...!

No more chicken dinners now until these hens hatch us some boy chicks and they grow up and start crowing...!

On an unrelated note, insane wind last night that Danny thought was going to take the roof of the porch, and now of course it's raining, but in between we got a bit of sunlight streaming in through the window this morning (whilst I was trying to do paperwork and getting in my eyes...!)

Random bits and bobs that have been accumulating in my camera...

Real Seeds Aquadulce Longpod Broad Beans that I sowed on 3rd January.  Just starting to put their heads up now so hopefully I will be able to transplant them into the new garden end of February maybe...

This bush in front of the house is one of the few things that's still green this time of year.  On overcast days like today when everything is grey, it's a much needed bit of colour...

Yesterday we went for a walk out to the Holms of Ire -- it's one of those landscapes that makes you realise how insignificant we really are -- even in Danny's hi-viz jacket he barely even registers!

Started on the repairing/replacing the fencing project this morning.  Got a short section done before the rain came in...

These beds are going to be covered by the polytunnel which will get put up once the sand and cement gets delivered...  This is a layer of hay that Jean put into the barn the summer before she died, and then after the doors of the barn came down in a storm and the rain got on, the hay sat there and rotted -- well, waste not, want not -- it makes a lovely mulch.  That in turn is covered with a layer of seaweed, so this should all make a lovely bed for me to plant in under cover.

Did somebody say kelp?

Cat at the end of the world just before we crossed the causeway to Inner Holm.  Quite a friendly kitty too!

Danny took this picture off the Western edge of Inner Holm -- not sure what these little red creatures are?

And here is the little bit of sunshine we had today.  Yes, I am getting that desperate that I am resorting to photographing things that are really rain clouds!

White Cockerel -- the gift that keeps giving!

After having roast chicken the other night, I took the rest of the meat off the carcass, boiled the bones up for stock, and made chicken pot pie with some of the meat.

Plus, we've still got a bit more meat left, so I reckon we will get four meals out of white cockerel -- not bad for a bird that we thought was a hen when we bought it...!

Roast Chicken -- start to finish...

Forget about all those recipes that begin, "preheat oven to 225C"...

This recipe begins, "take one chicken"...

He was very tasty and we thoroughly enjoyed eating him!  (And looking forward to another couple of meals worth -- 1.7kg deadweight, so quite respectable size IMO!)

...and Late Xmas Pressie!

Our first egg!  Woo hoo!

 

Early Xmas Pressies!

This morning, without telling me first, Danny culled poorly hen.  We had decided to do it, but I wanted to say goodbye to her first...

But then, at lunchtime, lovely vet lady came round and brought us two new hens, one of whom she says is currently laying, so hopefully this means we will have eggs soon, and that she will spur our existing hen into starting laying...

Anybody want to have a guess at IDing what breed these are?  Lovely markings but a Google search is bloody useless...

UPDATE:  After far too much time staring at pictures of chickens on the internet, I am going to say they are Silver-Penciled Plymouth Rocks unless somebody wants to enlighten me otherwise?

Cata Sands

Decided to give ourselves the day off today and went for a walk at Cata Sands.  Random photos in no particular order:

 

Winter Solstice

Never before in my life has solstice been so relevant.  First shot is at 9:05 this morning:

We had a few hours of sunlight, and I was going to take a photo at midday to show how low the sun was in the sky at its "highest" but the cloud had already come in by then, so...  This photo is 3:11 this afternoon -- sunset -- or what little smidgen of it you can see through the clouds...

I didn't start to really feel the effects of the lack of sun until about two weeks ago, so hopefully this means in another two weeks time I will start to notice that it's coming back...

In chicken news, poorly chicken of indeterminate gender is not really getting better despite antibiotics and eye bathing.  Also, now that it's on its own isolated from the other chickens, its apparent to us how much its beak deformity is preventing it from eating properly, so this chicken sadly is going to become soup shortly..

Also, still no video of this, but I have now seen with my own eyes that the cockerel I heard crowing back in response to Big Boy was indeed the white one that we had previously thought was a hen.  So after indeterminate sex chicken gets culled, we will have three boys and one girl.  Time to get some more hens...

And in Other News, the site of the future garden is complete for now -- nice layer of horse muck topped with nice layer of rotting seaweed...  Fingers crossed by springtime I will have some nice tillable material for planting in...

So now it's on to clearing this, which is the site of the future polytunnel.  There is a LOT more rubbish than you can see here lurking half hidden in that grass just waiting for you to trip over it...

Chickenpalooza...

The day began with me, out in the yard, hearing Big Boy crowing, and then, after a bit of a pause, hearing a very croaky crow in response, from, I assumed at the time, Little Boy, who hadn't yet crowed.  I made a mental note to go visit the chickens later and see if I could get this call and response on video.

Then various bits of doing other things, and then Danny came to ask me to come have a look at the chickens as he thought one of the hens was poorly.

As you can see, there's clearly something up with her eyes.  She kept knocking the drinker over because couldn't get her head in properly due to how much her eyes were swollen.  Various panic ensues and I Google all sorts of horrible diseases.  And then, through the magic of Facebook, I get directed to a veterinary nurse on the island who says she'll pop by and have a look.

We lanced one of the swellings, and what came out was much more watery than expected, leading us to think that it is a blocked tear duct rather than a nasty horrible infectious endemic bacterial disease.  Also, you'll note she has a deformity to her beak, so possibly the entire inside of her head is somehow deformed and causing this?  I've had a look at some pictures we took the first week they were here and it's not this bad but you can see there's something around her eye.  

In any case, she's had an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory, I'm bathing her eyes with saline solution, and we've separated her from the rest of the flock for the time being, so we'll see what happens.

So throughout this exchange, I kept referring to her as "her", because we have always thought that we started with three hens...  But lovely vet nurse lady thought that she was a he...  So then I said, here, come have a look at the rest of the flock...

And she also thinks that another one of the hens, who we had noticed lately was getting rather large, is also a he...  So possibly we have four boys and one girl, which might explain the lack of eggs...

Left to right in photo above is Big Boy, Little Girl, White Hen (who might be a boy), and Little Boy.  So now I'm not sure who I heard crowing in response this morning!  Time to find some more hens...

Here's Black Hen (now possibly male) after a day of poking and prodding.  Fingers crossed she is feeling/looking a bit better tomorrow.  But also, if this is all correct and we do in fact have four boys, at least two of them are going to end up in the pot, so that makes the decision about whether to cull this one or not a bit easier...

 

Storm Barra

Here we go again:  Red sky at night, shepherds' delight.  Red sky in the morning, flood alert warning.

I took this picture at about 8:30 this morning, just before the sun properly came up.  I'll try to take another one later but most of the storm is going to be after sunset and, also, it's amazingly hard to photograph "storm" in the absence of trees...  :)

 

"No-dig" Gardening...

Today was a nice day (about 2C, and 15mph winds -- but except for a brief hailstorm while we were eating lunch, it stayed dry -- how quickly one's perspective on what qualifies as a nice day changes...) so we got a bit done outside.

Back when we were at Bwlchyrhyd, I remember reading about no-dig gardening and thinking, as we were busy double-digging the beds, that it would be a lovely idea and involve much less work...  I was so wrong...!  One may not be digging over the bed, but the amount of digging involved in moving around all the compost is just as much!

I've now nearly got a 9m x 9m square covered in manure...

And Jean's muck heap is nearly all gone!  (Must remember to start taking "before" photos of things...)

We've got the doors back on the rear end of the big barn that had blown off in a storm last winter:

And Danny has spent a fair amount of time up on roofs today patching holes and leaks ready for the next storm.  My job is to stand on the bottom of the ladder and hold it still so this is mainly my view:

Here's a video Danny shot from the top of one of the roofs:

And little Freya kitty is still sleeping in the weirdest positions imaginable...  :)

 

Interior Decorating for Chickens

Very sadly, under the terms of the Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (including housing): November 2021, which came into force at 00:01 on Monday morning, our lovely happy little flock now have to live indoors until further notice.

We are trying to create a stimulating environment for them -- we have given them a pile of dirt with worms in and we have given them various perching objects -- but they are sad and they are missing being outside -- and we are missing seeing them around as we go about our tasks...

I'm afraid that this will become the norm and be something we have to do every winter now...