September Begins...

The tail end of the hurricane has definitely found us; this wind is crazy, so loud and booming, we have lost quite a few large-ish tree branches. One branch came down in the vegetable patch right on top of the donkeys, much to their dismay and made them bolt across the grass. The weather in general hasn't let up rain wise and the veggie plot with the donks in is starting to quickly turn to mud soup. We are trying to locate some free wood-chippings to put down but they won’t arrive until next week. At the moment we are putting the donkeys out during the day and bringing them in at night; thankfully this isn’t the long term plan as although it is good head-collar and walking training it is tiring and adds yet another half hour chore on at the end of the day.

Thank the lord I believe Mary is cured of her broodiness! It’s about bloody time too, it must be over a month of her awkwardness by now! The girls, touch wood, are much better and their course of antibiotics is over, although they still have pro-biotics to take as an after measure. My number of eggs has been steadily increasing so I’m taking that as a good sign.

The Eggy Egg Company business at the back gate seems to be catching on and picking up; for those of you who haven’t come via the website and might not know I have a box hanging on the back gate onto the moor. Sadly I have had quite a few thefts so I’ve had to implement a new procedure; this involves padlocking it, for individuals to access the eggs they must text with their name and address to receive the code. It may seem a bit overkill but asking nicely didn’t work! This was the only solution I could come up with as the individual in question who I believe to be stealing the eggs does not respond to anything other than prevention. The method has its disadvantages, it is proving awkward for me to have my phone with me 24/7, however I think it is worth the effort to keep my few but valued honest customers who enjoy picking up their groceries whilst on a leisurely moor walk.

Basil our beautiful back-bending Basset Hound has not been very well recently. He has a tooth abscess which resulted in his face swelling up, him being on anti-biotics and anti-inflammatories and ultimately culminating in him going into the vets today for a tooth extraction. Meggy has missed him very much, she’s been looking for him out in the fields and in the car and I must admit I will be relieved when we get him back at 4 o’clock safe and sound if not groggy and grumpy.

Yesterday we had another minor bunny drama. Flynn was out running in the stable for his daily exercise and when it came to Dad putting him back in his cage he scared the crap out of him. Flynn bolted through a small gap between Duke’s cage and the quail house and let out a sharp scream. On inspection he was bleeding from his front left foot, it turns out he caught his nail and has pulled it out. Ouch. The little fellow is fine and has cleaned himself up and calmed down, unfortunately I have been assured the nail will not grow back.

The other animals are all fine and well. The ducks got fresh water yesterday in their boat shaped blue plastic paddling pool (the inflatable pool unfortunately got popped very quickly!) All 8 of them proceeded to line up, climb in and push all the water out. Within 2 hours the glistening fresh clean water was turned into a thick sludgy and somewhat feathery gloop. They do seem to enjoy getting totally covered in mud and jumping in so who am I to stop them!

The best news is The Eggy Egg Company has finally been listed by Google in its own right! Now if you care to search for ‘eggy egg’ or ‘the eggy egg co’ yours truly shows up! Not being a computer geek myself and creating the website solo it did take me a while to figure out what I was doing regarding search engine optimisation, so it has taken me about 2-3 months to get it up on the web, needless to say I am very pleased and proud of my small IT achievement!

The Headlines...

The donkeys have arrived! Last week Teddy and Bailey took up residence in their new stable. They are settling in well, their training has commenced and they are both healthy and happy in their new loving home; it is a delight to own two such wonderful fluffy characters!

Lois' comb has finally flopped; after weeks of watching her comb grow bigger and bigger the time had finally come for the almighty flop! Lois is the second of my white leghorns and giant flopped combs are a common trait in the adult hens.

All the hens are doing much much better, the moulting seems to have ceased and a little regrowth has occurred, egg laying is on the rise again and there seems to be no sneezing; touch wood we've nailed this on the head.

Mary is STILL broody and I am beginning to lose my rag with the hot-bottomed little devil. She is being removed daily into a separate run where she cannot get to the nest box but when I put her to bed in the evening (that is if she hasn't already found her own way back over the 6 foot fence!) she goes straight back on the box! Argh

We still have not found a home or come to a conclusion on what to do about Gerry our chocolate Indian Runner Duck girl turned boy; in all honesty we may be burying our heads in the sand about it a bit, but he has not 'come of age yet' so we still have some time. We do however have a hen who has decided she is a cockerel. Tilly our little pekin/sablepoot is most definitely a teeny tiny boy; he struts to the top of his post and Cockadooodaaadddleeeddoooo's for all he's worth! He is still called Tilly (not very manly!) and is very unhappy about being housed alone but we have assured him that he is lucky not to be facing imminent death. Unfortunately no-one would want a cockerel, especially something so small without a pure breed (although he is very pretty); lucky for him we find his charming arrogant nature and sweet quiet crow amusing!