Archive for the ‘Chickens’ Category
Digging frozen veg
Like everyone we’ve had snow in the last few days, and the forecast doesn’t look too promising for the rest of today. All the vegetables that are still in the ground – parsnips, leeks, Jerusalem artichokes and cabbages – are frozen in, so we’re struggling a bit with getting fresh veg at the moment. However, we have found a good way of clearing the snow and defrosting the soil slightly… by using the left-over washing up water. It’s still warm enough to melt the snow and soften the ground enough to get a fork in to lever the veg out. This meant we got some parsnips yesterday and a few leeks for our supper tonight. We may just get some veg for the Christmas table!
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Frosty cabbage
It looks like winter has well and truly arrived. We measured -10°C in the polytunnel on Saturday night/Sunday morning and similarly temperatures last night. As I write the mercury is reading around -5°C. However, the sun is shining and everything is sparkling so while it may be cold at least it’s not snowing (yet!). Read the rest of this entry »
Preparing for next year
Things are definitely quietening down in the garden at the moment, although there always seems to be something to do. We’ve got quite a large pile of compost that has been rotting down over the summer, and to allow the worms to start incorporating it into the soil over winter, I thought I would spread it on the garden. We’ve still got an unused area of our new vegetable garden that has been under black plastic for nearly two years. I want to use this for potatoes next year, so a good dose of compost will help those along the way.
I was slightly wary of pulling pack the black plastic, because when we pulled some of it back in the summer we found a large grass snake underneath. I know they’re not poisonous, but it’s still a bit scary being confronted with a snake. Luckily all I saw this time was a bit of its shed skin and a small mouse that ran out and under the shed… mice I can cope with! Read the rest of this entry »
We’re back up to 4 eggs a day now. Whiskey (our de-beaked chicken) seems to have come back into lay after nearly a month of not paying her way! Hopefully the new way of feeding them has helped her to take in more food, and in turn the nutrients (like calcium) that she needs to produce eggs. So plenty of omlettes are back on the menu.
Not my good side
De-beaking in chickens is still fairly common amongst those destined for large enterprises, even free-range ones, and our warrens were de-beaked at one day old. We didn’t know about this when we bought them, but having now read up about it, and understand a bit more about the physiology of a chicken we would avoid buying chickens that have had it done. It has apparently been banned in some countries, and there was talk of doing it in this country, but this seems to have fallen by the wayside for now. It is meant to be a harmless operation, but our chicken Whiskey, is now suffering the consequences of a somewhat botched job, and has bit of an under-bite. Read the rest of this entry »