Introducing…. Yarrow!

Ivy’s Meep is now officially called Yarrow. She’s a fine, fat little lady, her white fur beginning to darken (not surprising, Ivy’s a sable-coloured ferret, black all over bar her white face markings) and Ivy’s being a good mum, keeping her meep cuddled and snuggled warmly in the nest with herself except when she pops out to say hi, grab food or relieve herself.

Holly was nesting last night and this afternoon I heard squeaking in her nest while she was at the food dish! I shall have to wait a few more days to find out how many she has and what genders.

Ajax has settled with Fido for company, Rambo being in with Angus, and both sets of boys seem to get on okay so there’s no more screaming and biting. Ferrets are not shy of letting you know when they’re cross and for a fairly small animal they can produce a fearsome volume of scream!

The ducks are being a bit exasperating at the moment – Mother Duck is doing fine, still sitting determinedly on her eggs in their bucket, but the younger ones are being a bit tricky.

First Black Duck started disappearing at night and being around through the day – but squeaking if anyone went near. She didn’t show up at all yesterday and I can’t find her anywhere. Patchy Girl was squeaking yesterday and today she’s vanished! I’ve seen Lavender Girl this morning but not Little Madam yet… my fingers are firmly crossed that they’ve decided to go broody and just settled in a hedge or inside the farmer’s barns next door. If so, they’ll reappear with ducklings in due course…

Here’s hoping – and if they are planning on that, I need to register my mixed flock with DEFRA before they put me well over the 50-bird legal limit for unregistered flocks! Including the chicks I’m at 43 just now and Mother Duck’s eggs are due to hatch on the 23rd (provided their various nest-collapses didn’t chill the poor things too badly!) so it’s going to be tight.

The chicken chicks are doing well, getting quite animated about scratching, pecking and dashing about their cage. The quail chicks have developed a strategy for being deprived of their brooder a bit early, which is stacking up on top of each other at night.

Nightshade has had a little of 3 little black bunnies, which means Sage is a proven buck. Mistletoe isn’t showing signs of nesting at the moment so I won’t separate them for a couple more weeks, but then he’d better go into a cage by himself. The other pair, Snowdrop and Daffodil (the buck) are also not showing signs of nests. All the bunnies (except the babies, of course!) are now going into a pen on the grass for a couple of hours a day in three shifts and loving it; they’re doing a grand job of eating docks and mowing the grass, too.