Hello, and welcome to our blog. We are a comitted couple living in West Lothian with our seven furry (& thirteen feathered) babies - don't worry, we don't have kids with Hirsutism - they are dogs, cats, chickens and a parrot!! We consider ourselves to be happy-go-lucky individuals, who most definitely believe in living life to the full whilst attempting not to hurt people along the way! We enjoy the company of warm, fun people - a sense of humour is absolutely essential to 'get' us (plain silly to pure sarcasm). We don't 'gel' well with people who can suck the life out a duracell battery.

Our hobbies are vast and varied...We should spend a lot of time renovating our 100 year old cottage, but we much prefer browsing for hours in book shops, people watching, coffee shops, cinema, shopping, walking by the beach or being lost for hours in the country, cuddling in bed, watching DVDs when we really should be out cutting the grass!, cooking, eating out in quaint little restaurants that serve food so yummy you want to do a little dance at the table, playing Sudoka (and spending way too much money on those rip off little puzzle books!), debating (for hours on end) with each other (or anyone who'll listen) over the downfall of society, etc...and how everything was much better in 'our day', telling each other the same stories over and over again...and still expecting the laughs/knods like it's the first time we've ever heard them, Scrabble, spending money we don't have on things we don't need, xwords/arrow words, Eggheads (any quiz programme really), gardening - in an attempt to become as self sufficient as possible, spending hours upon hours sitting watching our beautiful girls doing what chickens do, reading/posting on various forums (addictive, isn't it?). Oh..and saving for our Civil Ceremony, planned for 2012.

This blog is about all of the above, and more. We hope you'll at least enjoy some of it - thanks for taking the time to visit!

Bobbie & Liz
xxx

Friday, 16 October 2009

Chook Stock Take....

Last night I decided to take a picture of each of the babies individually, seeing as I haven't really updated the blog recently with any pictures of them. I waited until bedtime, when they're all quiet and calm, before subjecting them to the fashion parade. As it turns out, cockerels can be feisty when they don't wish to participate in the planned events! Regardless, I plodded on...and 40 minutes later, we have an ok-ish selection of 'growing-up' chick pictures. I am pretty confident we have 3 boys, 1 girl from Henrietta's clutch and 1 boy, 3 girls from Mavis' clutch. Of course, Araucana's are incredibly hard to sex....so if you disagree with my sexing let me know, please!

Photobucket
Romeo - our stunning Araucana boy.

Photobucket
Festher - our Maran X Araucana boy.

Photobucket
Dorienne - our only Araucana girl from this batch. She's lovely.

Photobucket
A very feisty Dorcus (who should be renamed Marcus) - a boy, I hope!

Photobucket
Sookie - our white Araucana female (?)

Photobucket
Dozey Dora - Araucana female, hopefully.

Photobucket
Un-named Araucana boy.

Photobucket
Un-named Araucana girl.

Hopefully I've sexed the above right - if not, I'll be in big trouble! :)

For pure comedy value I decided to practice my chicken hypnotism on the babies from day 1 - I have been doing this now for 14 weeks, and it's actually been very successful. Below is a couple of pics of Festher demonstrating the technique.

Photobucket

Photobucket

As I mentioned in my previous post...the girls are moulting right now, and it's terrible. I have 5 adult girls shedding every one of their feathers in the space of a week. The garden is in an awful state...and the chicken run is depressing me to even think about! Again, for comedy value I decided to take a picture of poor Gwendolyn to show you HOW BAD she's looking. I mean, I know she's got nothing on an ex batt....but come on, this must be heartbreaking for a big, stunning, proud Faverolle female! :))

Photobucket
She's soooo ashamed she can't even bring herself to look at the camera!

Photobucket
One very unhappy girl...

Apart from the feather chaos everything else at the cottage has been fine. My work has been 'hardcore' over the last few weeks - working on average 70 hours a week - so my time at home has been limited, which means there is LOADS of husbandry work to catch up with. Everything else has been running smoothly....thankfully all the animals have been good. Alfie came home tonight with a pretty bad cat bite on his shoulder, which appears to already be slightly infected. I've cleaned it up and flushed it, so hopefully this will do the trick and we won't need anti-b's, but who knows! :(

I've been looking through the albums tonight and found a whole lot of really good pictures I haven't posted on the blog yet, so tomorrow (when I'm a little more awake) I'll post them. It's been a while since we've had a photo bonanza post anyway, it's long overdue!

G'night! xox
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)