I picked up a little yellow duckling the morning after they hatched – he must have slipped out of the nest, not been able to find his way back in and died of exposure. Holly Ferret did disposal duty for me.

Yesterday the 5 surviving ducklings were bobbing about in Mother Duck’s water tray when I went out, so I cleared the unhatched eggs. 3 exploded when I cracked them to check (just as well I always crack eggs on the far side of the garden wall! – that way the revolting green sulphurous contents go elsewhere, not on me!), 4 had dead chicks and the last one cheeped at me, so I popped it hurriedly back in the nest. When I checked a couple of hours later Mother Duck had moved to cover her brood, leaving the half-hatched chick to chill. I picked it up again, took it inside and warmed it up, then noted the membranes inside the shell had dried, which means they shrink… so the poor duckling was effectively shrink wrapped.

I did a bit of careful damping of the membranes to get them loose, picked off all the shell and put the cheeper in the incubator to get nice and warm. That gave him the chance to shed the shell, and a little more careful wiping with a damp cotton bud cleared the last stuck-on bits of membrane. He spent the night inside in a cardboard box on a towel-wrapped hot water bottle under my second electric hen and looked chirpy this morning, so I decided to see if Mother Duck would take him.

She did, straight off. I popped him down, she squeaked, he squeaked, she squeaked, then lifted herself up and herded him, with her beak, into the warmth under her wings with his siblings. As you can see from the video at the top of this post, he’s a bit smaller than the others but looks fine.

I have no doubt Mother Duck is much better at raising ducklings than I am, so this is excellent!

I also braved Lucy this morning – she’s definitely sitting in the big dairy shed, so I took her previous eggs back to her. I popped a feed bucket upside down on Hannibal’s head, which kept him occupied while I carefully dodged Lucy’s beak and put her eggs on the end of her nest. She hooked them in, swearing at me in Hiss the whole time, so I beat a retreat, liberating a very cross Hannibal as I went!

Day 37 of her mammoth Sitting experience and Mother Duck has ducklings this morning! I’ve glimpsed a few, removed a few vacated shells and noted a few more definitely still chipping, so I don’t expect her to hop off the nest and want to take her brood outside quite yet.

In other news, I’ve had a thorough look at Holly’s litter and she has two boys and two girls. One of the jills appears to be an albino, going by the pale eyes, and one of the hobs is quite dark so I expect he’ll be a poley. I’m not sure about the other two! All the same, I can start considering names for them now I know if they’re Clytemnestras or Agamemnons.

I’m being erratic in my blogging again. Apologies!

Abe’s operation went well on Thursday – he was a bit leery of the syringe for the sedative but I cupped my hand behind his eye so he couldn’t see it coming and he relaxed straight off, didn’t feel the needle going on and was shortly so dopey I had to hold his head up for a bit in case it pulled the rest of him sideways! The vet waited a minute or so until gravity won over the relaxed tummy muscles and then applied local anaesthetic and snipped the growth off smartly, put in three little self-dissolving stitches, gave Abe an anti-inflammatory shot and another of antibiotics, then handed me packets of pain killers and took the growth away to be examined by the lab. All done in 45 minutes! We should have results at the end of next week – and once we know what the thing was, the vet can decide what the appropriate next step is, from ‘do nothing’ to ‘seek specialist advice’! Abe was a bit dopey for the rest of the afternoon but was totally fine and haring around the field with the others the following day, which was George’s 4th Birthday!

I walked out to the field to say happy birthday, where the three youngsters were lying down, and George hoisted himself up and came to get his hug – and he actually allowed me to give him a hug, too, which is unusual! – while the others stayed down. Poppy watched in the distance (she’s right off at the far end of the field, to the left of George in the pic).

I now have 4 goose eggs in the pantry, waiting to see if Lucy plans on going broody. If she does, I’ll slip them back under her – hopefully without Hannibal killing me in the process.

Mother Duck is still sitting, she just gives me beady looks when I ask if she has ducklings yet so I’ll have to wait and see! Patchy Girl pops in daily for food and water then disappears back to her nest – this morning she walked up to me and made ‘feed me!’ signs, opening and closing her beak while looking piteously at me, so I spent five minutes sitting in the yard in the mizzle holding a scoop of layers’ pellets for her! The chickens were trying to muscle in and needed to be fended off. Black Duck reappeared on Friday and has popped in daily since, so I’ve been able to track her back to her nest – she’s round the far side of the farmer’s barn, tucked just inside between two round straw bales and very snug. They both have good safe nest spots with plenty of down to snug the eggs into, so I’ll just keep an eye on them and once they have ducklings, try to bring them into the yard safely so they won’t get run over or stolen by rats.

I’ve been doing quite a lot of air pistol practice in the big dairy/workshop – when the horses are out – as the rat population is growing again. I’m nearly up to being able to hit a sitting rat at 5m now, so I shall start putting bait out in a suitable spot. Once they’re used to going to that spot for food, I’ll be able to sit in ambush and pot them humanely. I’ll also put out the live-trap – again, once it’s baited and they’re used to it, I should be able to catch a few before they wise up.

Holly seems to have a mixed litter of meeps – some may be starting to go dark, I think one might be an albino and there’s another I’m not sure what it’s doing; the coat seems pale still but the eyes look dark, although of course none of them have their eyes open yet. Yarrow is going beautifully dark with white front mitts, like her dad Rambo!

Nightshade’s litter of baby bunnies have their eyes open now and are getting quite determined about hopping out of my fingers and back into their nest when I go poking about in there! The bunnies have had a couple of days without grazing as the strong winds blew their pens over on Friday and I had to chase them all over to get them safely incarcerated again! Looking at the weather forecasts, we might be okay to put the pens back up this afternoon.

I’ve not been taking many photos recently and I’m trying to remind myself to do more! I also have the trail cams set up in new positions as I keep hoping to find out where Black Duck got to, but no sign yet.

It does mean I have more pix, anyway.

Like this one of Abe doing a little training session the other day – he’d almost forgotten how to long-rein, poor lad!

It was as well I was wearing the skull cap – in the process of him trying to remember how to stand next to the mounting block a little later, he experimented with pawing the ground, climbing up the block after me and bonking me on the head with his nose several times. Eventually he worked out the correct answer – stand quietly parallel to block and allow silly human to jump up and down, lean over, pat, thump and shake saddle – and was rewarded with lots of nuggets as a result.

While we’re still on the subject of Abe, when Odette visited to trim hooves she remarked on an ‘odd growth’ on his undercarriage. Of course I was twelve feet away and couldn’t see and Abe’s a very private-minded chap on the subject of his privates, so it’s taken me all this time to get a glance for myself. That happened in the evening of the 17th, so first thing on the 18th I phoned the vet to discuss. Last night while feeding him I managed to insinuate my phone under his tum and snapped a few pix of the offending object, which the vet will be removing on Thursday afternoon.

Interestingly, while eating in solitary splendour in the field, Abe was being escorted front and rear by cockerels. Snowball helped by picking up bits of dropped feed:

Al was just behind with one of the chocolate girls (the two Araucana cross hens look so similar I can’t tell them apart!)

I found this stunning dawn on a north facing trail cam (!) this morning:

I found this gem on the other trail cam, which covers the north paddock entrance:

Also on this camera overnight, though much hardly to find, is Boojum, the feral cat!

Or at least her tail.

And finally, here’s Daffodil and Snowdrop enjoying the grass in front of the lounge windows, together with escorting flotilla of assorted chickens!

For those who are finding my various birds slightly confusing…

Starting with the smallest:

I have 10 quail – 5 adults from last year and 5 chicks from this year. They’re all in the barn now and doing quite happily there. None of them have names since I can’t tell them apart! The cock birds have reddish-coloured heads and the hens don’t, but beyond that they have me foxed. I just call them all ‘the quail’. Quail take 17 day to hatch and 6 weeks from hatching to laying their first egg.

Next size up, the chickens. I have 4 cockerels; Snowball is a white silky and looks like a high-speed fluffy white pompom, usually in hot pursuit of a female. Charlie is a little taller and basically black, while Angel is smaller and definitely black. Al is a totally different kind of beast, he’s a sleek and handsome black and golden-red rooster with a lovely arched tail. There are also 10 rescue hens, who all look the same so they don’t have names. There are also 5 hens with names – two are called chocolate because they’re very similar and a light milk-chocolate colour, they’re Araucana crosses and lay big blue eggs. Mahogany is a beautiful black hen with reddish highlights, she lays a brown egg. Hamburg is a Pencilled Hamburg and lays a white egg, and Pompom is a silky-cross who is small, black, sleek and has (oddly enough…) a feathery head that looks like a black pompom. She lays a smaller blue egg, so there’s Araucana in the mix! I also have 4 chicks in the lounge, who are still in their chick fluff – three are black with paler bits (including one with a white bottom!) and one is stripy. I’m looking forward to seeing how they turn out when they have their adult feathers! Hens take 21 days to hatch and then 16 weeks to reach first egg, give or take a bit (silkies are usually slower).

Getting into the big ones, there are the Muscovy ducks. I have 5 ducks, who are moderately decent-sized for ducks and 3 drakes, who are massive, about 2-3 times the size of the ducks. Blondie is basically a white drake, Lavender Boy is mostly grey with a white head and Patchy Boy has more white and less grey. In the ducks, there’s Mother Duck, who’s the oldest and parented all the others last year when they hatched; she’s white with a black patch on her back and a black tail. Little Madam looks rather like her but with a smaller black patch and only the middle of her tail is black. Patchy Girl is mostly white with a grey back, while Lavender Girl is mostly grey with a white head. Finally, Black Duck is black with a white head. Muscovies take 35 days to hatch and about 5 months to mature.

The geese are the biggest; Lucy is mostly white with a grey back and Hannibal is almost entirely white with a black patch on the back of his neck. Goose eggs take 28 days to incubate and geese then need about a year to reach full size, 2 years to first egg and usually 3 years to decide they’re ready to raise goslings.

Hopefully that sorts things out!

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.

Sadly, Achilles lost his fight last night. He leaves a gaping hole in the ferret colony and in our hearts.

Life, however, goes on. I had a feel in Ivy’s nest this morning and she has one ‘meep’ – a fine, fat, well-grown kit, covered in white fur though still blind, deaf and capable only of limited squirms and wriggles. I didn’t check to see if it was a hob or a Jill – Ivy was looking suspiciously at me over her dish of chicken liver – but if it’s a hob, he’ll be called Achilles. If a jill… it could be interesting, because Achillea is the Latin name for Yarrow.

Holly is still huge, but she’s due any day now – indeed, practically any minute! – with hopefully more than one kit, but less than the 15 that’s generally accepted as the upper limit of ferret litter sizes!

I had an interesting moment at lunchtime – I’d brought Abe out into the yard to do some standing-on-mat practice (he’s getting very good at planting his hooves firmly and squarely. on the mat) and then Lynn came to swap some empty egg boxes for full ones and paused to chat (distantly). While we were catching up on the gossip, it became apparent I’d neglected to close the barn gate, because George appeared through it, smiling happily (as he does) and delighted to come and join us.

He was very civilised, considering – he did pull one ugly face at Lynn but she spoke severely and I told him to back up, which he did, and then all was sweetness and light again. Lynn agrees with me, though – he’s well over 18 hands now! I’m just able to hook my fingers over his withers when I stand next to him – if I stretch a full arm’s length above my head!

Later on another horsey friend, Lynsey, came by. She’s a Friesian expert and they’re not small horses by any means – her own mare is 16.2 and very sparky at times – but it was quite amusing that she looked across the field at the four horses grazing near each other and remarked in a tone of respectful awe ‘he’s huge!!’

Admittedly (and rightly, given his breed!) so he is.

Dancer now is an inch or so taller than Abe, who is possibly two inches taller than Poppy… but, oh, my, George….!

Close up he’s even more impressive – he has a massive bulk and solidity to him that really comes across as he looms over you from a couple of feet away. Given he’s still a couple of weeks short of his fourth birthday, he’s going to be truly spectacular when he reaches his full maturity, somewhere around 6-8 years old!

It’s shocking how time just slips by at the moment. My last post was the 29th April and here we are on the 8th May! How did that happen?

A lot has gone on in that time.

Achilles the ferret has spent a good bit of time in the lounge, I brought him in for some intensive care as he was losing weight steadily outside. I managed to get his weight back up with a lot of hand-feeding meat, but then he started showing signs that it was in fact a blockage that was at the root of his problem so just before surgery closing time last night I picked up a tube of liver-flavoured liquid paraffin gel from the vet. He likes it and licks it up happily, and this morning he’s looking better (though thinner again!) and has passed some droppings that appear to contain fibres of some kind – whether it was a hairball or he’d swallowed scraps of torn nesting material, I don’t know. As of today, he’s back out in a cage with Ajax, his litter-brother, and seems more cheerful about life again. I shall continue to visit and hand-feed him mice and raw chicken five or six times a day, though!

Moving Achilles back out entailed rearranging the ferrets fairly drastically. Achilles doesn’t like Angus, who doesn’t like Achilles or Ajax, and Rambo’s fighting everyone at the moment, so I spent most of yesterday washing and scrubbing the big indoor cages they spent the winter in. Today those were moved back into the barn and reassembled, then I played a kind of shell game with ferrets and cages as I moved ferrets into one cage, extracted Angus from a fight and put him in the other cage, moved the run through to the small dairy (the ferrets are in the large dairy at the moment), then moved Angus through to the run and moved the empty cage into the space the run had occupied. I then moved the three hobs from the other cage into the first, moved the second cage (now empty) into position and then split them up again with Angus and Fido in one cage, Ajax and Rambo in the other.

Rambo and Ajax, both bruisers, promptly set about each other.

I put shavings down in the run in the small dairy, set up food and water bowls, then moved the adult quail from the hutch in the yard into the run. I then moved the hutch into the large dairy, cleaned it out, set it up with food, water and bedding and put Rambo in it.

Peace descended.

Achilles rejoined Ajax and was sniffed carefully all over before being washed and cuddled into the nest carefully.

That freed up the big cage in the lounge for the hen eggs in the incubator, which started hatching this morning! At the moment we have 4 chicks, 3 black and 1 stripy, and three eggs. All were pipping earlier, though, so there may be more chicks by tomorrow. I cleaned the cage out and set up food and water on puppy pads for the chicks (easy to clean out and I can dispose of them easily by rolling them up tightly and putting them in the fire) so tomorrow morning I shall steal the electric hen from the quail chicks, who are now fully feathered, and put it in the other cage with the hen chicks, or chicken hatchlings (confusing, isn’t it?) so they stay snug and warm.

Yesterday was Poppy’s flu jab, and since I only get ten minutes’ notice from the vet I decided to keep her in most of the day and pamper her a bit! (I could book an appointment but it’s cheaper using their ‘equine zone’ and none of mine are hard to catch…. sometimes hard to shoo away!) Poppy was groomed thoroughly, hooves picked out, mane and tail combed, then I brought out the roller.

When Poppy first came to me she was wearing a rug in the field in wet weather, but she had a crashing fall one day and went right off being rugged after that, so this was the first time she’s had anything around her since then. I took it slow and with plenty of treats to encourage a good association and happiness, and while there was a bit of a flinch the first time I put it gently over her back, she let me do it up loosely, then I took it off, put it back on, did it up again, took her for a walk around the yard, took it off and repeated several times. By the end of that she was entirely relaxed and nonchalant about the roller, so I brought the saddle out and she gave it a slightly startled look but let me put it on and off her back several times. I didn’t try to girth it up as the vet then arrived! The jab itself was totally painless and Poppy didn’t even twitch, so then I put her out with the others again.

This morning I had them all in and tied up as the hoof trimmer was due at 9am. I tied up Abe first because he decided not to come in for breakfast (he gets away with having dinner in the field sometimes, the little monkey!) so he came in via the orchard rather than the walkway and I attached him and his bucket to the outside of the yard fence. I then put head collars on Poppy and Dancer, tied ropes to the hay net I’d hung in the yard and the fence just by it and then, when George finished eating breakfast and came to investigate me catching up with the mucking out, I put his head collar on and tied him up in the horse barn.

There was cunning in this layout. Poppy was in the doorway to the stable shed, so even if George broke loose and came out to investigate while Odette was trimming toes in the yard, he wouldn’t come out – he’d only get to Abe’s bit and then stall under one of Poppy’s glares! As it happened, he behaved superbly and stayed tied up quietly the whole time, and then let me pick up his hooves in my hands into the bargain!

It was also a ‘first’ for Dancer – she’s never been tied up before at all. She took it with aplomb and behaved beautifully.

When I went back into the house after Odette had left (we carefully stayed about 12 feet apart at all times and conversed by shouting to each other!) there were two chicks in the incubator! Both are black with white markings, one came from a brown egg and the other from a blue egg. Through the day two more have hatched – one from a blue egg and one from the white egg laid by Hamburg, the Pencilled Hamburg hen. That chick is stripy, while the other blue egg chick is black again. I’ve no idea who fathered what and (apart from Hamburg) I can’t tell which hen laid which egg, so it’s going to be fun watching them all grow up!

Catching up on the ferrets briefly – Ivy became svelte and slim again on Tuesday night, and her nest squeaks quietly to itself, so she has a litter of ‘meepers’ in there! I haven’t disturbed her to look – ferret mums can be a bit funny about that and eat their litters, so it’s better to wait until the kits are 7 days old. Hopefully by then Holly will also be slender and lithe again – she’s exceedingly stout just now!

Mother Duck is struggling a bit – her nest keeps disintegrating! I had to actually pull it together again today, then retrieve all the eggs and pop them back in, then pick up the duck and plunk her on top of the lot – she only has 10 days to go now so I hope all her privation and labour hasn’t been wasted by the eggs getting chilled! She’s very light, having restricted herself to just one meal a day and dedicated Sitting all the rest of the time, even though I make sure her food dish is always heaped up high.

George has taken another big step forward – he’s suddenly realised that it’s okay for a human to not have treats every time he sees them. I’m now able to cross the yard without needing to feed him in passing, to muck out without being mugged and to groom the whole herd together without a fight breaking out! He’s developing more security and trust and it’s wonderful!

There’s a meme that keeps coming round on my FB feed from various horsey friends and groups.

Horses are angels, but to disguise their angelic nature they don’t wear their wings in public.

George flapped his wings for me today.

It came about because I foolishly ignored the geese bathing themselves in one of the horse water buckets in the yard as I ducked through the rails and headed happily towards another lovely, well-behaved grooming session with George this morning. As I was about to step up onto the level bit in front of the big dairy, George heading out of the stable to join me, Hannibal attached himself to the back of my left knee.

He’d got me well and truly – I have a big red bruise to show for it – and immediately started whacking me heavily with his wings. I had George bearing down on me in search of nuggets and attention, his ears slouched back, and for a moment I was quite apprehensive about what the big ginger job’s reaction would be to me flailing about with the gander under his very nose. Was I about to get bitten from the other direction as well?

George halted a foot or two back from me and observed with a kind of slightly mystified curiosity as I managed at last to beat Hannibal off the back of my knee. Staggering sideways with him coming back in for round two, I appealed for assistance without thinking.

“George! Help!”

Immediately, he put his head down and blew, very hard, right in Hannibal’s face!

You could have knocked me down with a feather! Hannibal stopped in his tracks, of course, then abandoned all pretence of being a savage animal and reversed several steps before turning and hurrying away back to Lucy, who was just the other side of the fence. George took a half-step after him, head still down, then swung round to me and put his head up and ears forward.

Needless to say, I practically unloaded the entire treat bag into his mouth, while thanking him profusely.

I might say that we had a very nice grooming session after that – though once he’d put his wings away again George did slip up and nip my arm once. He’s still very young, after all…

I’ll try and get some pix of the Herd without the fence in the way tomorrow.

Apparently I’ve been slacking for a few days and not posting here! Shocking.

It’s particularly shocking because, in these missing days, George has made massive strides forward and is a reformed character!

It started when I got fed up of him doing his temper-tantrum foot-stamping tail-swishing teeth-waving don’t-groom-me-there act and simply walked off, stood out of reach and counted to ten, slowly. After that I went back and pretended nothing had happened. All was fine for a minute or two and then he tried it again. I sent him to Coventry again.

It took a few repeats and me hiding behind Poppy a couple of times, but then suddenly it clicked in his big ginger head and he started yawning massively, head hanging almost to the ground, as he relaxed totally and allowed me to groom him all over without a twitch. At one point he even carefully gathered my free hand between his lips so he could just, very delicately, hold it there.

I was a little nervous about it but he was exquisitely gentle.

The following day’s grooming session saw a couple of initial sendings-to-Coventry and then he started yawning and hanging his head again, and that was that.

The day after that he didn’t need even a single reminder of the new rules – he stood beautifully in the sunshine and allowed me to groom him all over without a twitch, just reaching round a couple of times to nuzzle my sleeve as a reminder that his last treat had run out and please could he have another.

Yesterday saw another step forward as the good behaviour stayed even though the whole herd was in the yard together as I groomed them, and George remained mannerly and polite even when he was having to share me in close proximity with Abe and Dancer.

Today he had me all to himself again as he came in when he saw me mucking out the barn, so he’s had a long grooming session, a scoop and a half of hay nuggets’ worth of positive reinforcement and we both enjoyed it immensely.

Technically I used negative punishment to change his behaviour – the withdrawal of something he likes – and I’m now using tons of positive reinforcement to make sure the new gentle, polite behaviour is solidly imprinted in his mind for the future. It’s definitely working – he got impatient this morning as I was mixing feeds and kicked the barrier so much it fell off its hinges. I waved my arms and yelled quite a bit, of course, and he backed off and stood looking quite penitent and hopeful rather than sulking or taking the ‘ump at being told off. He even waited politely while I picked the door up and rehung it, even though he knew his breakfast was just behind me!

Undoubtedly we still have a long way to go but it’s a massive step forward.