Been working out in the garden today. We’ve been chopping down some more of the large fir trees that have been attempting to take over the back part of the garden. Dad and I had made good in-roads into getting rid of them some time back but it’s taken until now for me to continue to do the others.

It’s was a lovely day though – very springy and about 14 degrees centigrade. Daisy came and did the shredding while I weilded the chainsaw. Currently the garden is still in the getting-worse-before-getting-better stage, although the hope is once we’ve replaced the aging fence along the back and we’ve planted some nice shrubs, the garden will start to look smarter again.

When chopping down one of the trees we found a perfectly formed nest. It was really well constructed and very solidly built. We suspect a Robin. This is, of course, the problem with pulling down the trees in our garden – It doesn’t seem very wildlife friendly. We will be replacing the trees with easier to handle shrubs and we’re going to choose them carefully to be most wildlife friendly. However, there will still be no where much for the birds to nest. For that reason, we have a bunch of bird boxes that we’re putting up around the garden on the few beech trees that we’re leaving in place. We put them up today, so I hope it’s not too late for the birds to find them and move in.

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I was hoping that maybe we could cut the lawn today (using my newly fixed mower! woohoo!) but we were just too busy with the trees. Our mower has been out of action since the middle of last summer after the handle broke. This weekend I actually managed to get around to making a new handle (better to fix something than get a new one, of course). You can see my “interesting” bit of woodwork below. Believe it or not, it’s more comfy than the old plastic handle.

Two days ago, Daisy said my hair looked “uneven”. I’d already been called “the wild man of Borneo”. So, this morning, she cut my hair. Now I look less like a hippy-folkie and more like a sensible insurance salesman from suburbia.

Talking of before and afters, I am very pleased with the transformation of Gail, our bald and insipid looking hen. Gail and her mate, Claire, have moved out into the main run, although separated from the golden girls (Branche, Dot and Rose) by a fence. They both look very healthy now. Check for yourself how she looked when we got her in October and how she compares now in March.

It was a sad moment early in January when Stumpy died. She was the last surviving chicken from our first batch of chickens that introduced us to the wonderful world of smallholding. She had a sour crop and our best efforts with the drugs seemed to clear that up, but there was clearly another issue. Up until lthe last few hours, she seemed quite content and Daisy and I thank her for all the eggs and pleasure she gave us. She is now buried in the garden with her three friends.

We’ve got two more chickens! They were rescued from the cold having escaped the lorry that took their colleagues to the slaughter house. Many didn’t make it, but these two did – found huddled close to the heating system of the battery barn.

They’re still nameless at the moment. The one on the left has a broken spur that we’re applying TCP to. The one on the right is, as you can see, “oven ready” – that’s to say, very few feathers. She’s rather cold so she’s currently acclimatising to the cold in a separate pen that’s in our lean-to.

Yesterday morning Puffy was put to sleep on the recommendation of the vet. She had developed sour crop and we took her to the vet expecting to get her put on antibiotics and anti-fungal medicines, but the vet had a feel around and said that she wasn’t in good condition and had probably been ill for some time. He said the sour crop was probably a symptom of another more serious disease and he recommended putting her to sleep.

I felt bad the rest of the day as I felt I’d been a little rushed into the decision. However, she’s at rest now, buried next to Blondie and Vicious.

That leaves Stumpy all on her own. I hope she doesn’t get too lonely before we can go and get some more chickens.

It’s been a bad day today. I’m not superstitious but what’s happened today is almost enough to make one superstitious.

So, we decided, having felt the bottom of our chicken called Vicious, that we must take her to the vet again. Her tummy was very tight but seemingly no reason. She wasn’t in a lot of distress but was drinking huge amounts of water, as she had been for a long time. Strangely another of our chickens, Blondie, was also drinking lots of water and did appear to want to pass something more than she could.

So, we booked an appointment at a vet (a different vet to last time – one that we’d been told were nice and caring).

In the morning, Blondie didn’t come out of the house. She wasn’t right. Daisy saw her trying to pass an egg – she was egg bound again.

So, we started to get a box together ready to take them down the vet, but when we returned to the house, Blondie was dead. It’s likely she had a heart attack while trying to force out the egg. I quickly dug a hole and we paid our respects to her, before we rushed off to our appointment with Vicious.

The vet was, as we were told, very nice. She felt around and reckoned Vicious was egg bound. I had read (on T’internet) that egg bound chickens only last a couple of days (see Blondie as an example) so how Vicious had lasted for over a month is hard to say. The vet pulled out some really strange bits of egg from inside her, but couldn’t reach the other egg. She gave her some drugs to help move the egg along and then we waited for the drugs to take effect.

But there was no effect. Vicious just slept and began to look more ill. So, the vet tried again. By now Vicious was getting weak with the effort. She could barely stand up. So it was with a deep sorrow we decided it was best to have her put to sleep.

We brought her home in her box and buried her next to Blondie in the garden.

It’s so sad to see our first chickens pass on. Although it’s likely I couldn’t have done anything I still feel it’s somehow my bad husbandry. I’m sorry girls. RIP

So, I was wrong. I’m a rubbish husband to my chickens. Vicious was still poorly today and so I decided to give her a better examination only to find that she is egg bound after all. The poor girl’s been egg bound for 2 days now and I hadn’t noticed. I feel so stupid.

With the help of Daisy we fed her a good dose of olive oil to help lubricate her insides. She wasn’t at all happy and when we put her into the house she had taken a real disliking to us and couldn’t even look at us. Awww.

If she’s still poorly tomorrow morning I might try to get her to have something calcium-rich and then she’s going in the bath for a warm soak. This will help her to relax the muscles around the vent and possibly pass the egg. Then I’ll create a box for her into which she will go where it will be dark and warm, lined with straw. This will help her to concentrate on passing the egg. If there’s still no luck by later in the day, I think some oil will need to be passed directly into the oviduct and some gentle massaging of her undercarriage to help the egg out.

Worst case scenario is to break the egg inside and pull it all out, but that can cause all manner of problems of its own, so that’s really last resort.

So, I’ve been looking after the chicken all day now. This morning I built a small run out of the run that came with our chicken house. It was much too small, so I built a large one but we kept the parts to make up the smaller run. However, it may have been too small for 4 chickens to live in, but it makes an ideal hospitalisation ward!

I put Vicious (that’s her name because she’s top of the pecking order) in the run and gave her some fresh water, some fresh grit and some food. She didn’t eat the food, looked suspiciously at the grit but continues to drink lots.

My sister, who’s kept chickens before, came around at lunchtime. Vicious was a little perkier than this morning and was walking slowly around the cage. She was able to give a good old flapping and squawking when she was caught for another crop fondle. The crop doesn’t appear to hurt her and it’s not as large as it was yesterday. However, it’s still quite full of fluid.

I read on T’internet that sometimes yoghurt can help with an infection, so I cycled up to our local shop to find they didn’t have any natural stuff. So I had to cycle into town and bought two pots of Yeo Valley Organic Pro-Biotic natural yoghurt. I gave her a tub with some in and she tried the tiniest amount but didn’t seem impressed. From what I’ve read online chickens love yoghurt. But it is new to her so perhaps she’s a bit wary. Anyway, I’ve left it with her and hopefully she’ll try some more. It might help her out.

We have a sickly chicken. We noticed last night that she was somewhat lethargic and had all her feathers puffed out. A quick check of her vent suggested she wasn’t egg bound. We felt around her crop and noticed it seemed large. First thing that came to mind was impacted crop – this is where food she’s eaten gets wound up into a ball and won’t fit through the crop into the gizzard. However, her crop wasn’t hard or doughy as you might expect with an impacted crop; it appeared to be full of water. And she is drinking… a lot!

I’ve done some searching on T’internet and found a few things. Here’s some snippets from this forum.

If the crop is just full of liquid, then it is likely not impacted but soured and needs the meds immediately in order to get the crop working again. Soured crops shut down and thus muscle contractions don’t work anymore, leaving goo to ferment further in the crop, compounding the

Baytril is the drug of choice for a bacterial crop infection… You can try giving her oxytetracycline (which isn’t prescription in North America, but it would be in UK, Europe or Australia, depending on where you live). Oxytet will help, but may not be as effective as baytril.

If there is a yeast infection, the nystatin is by far the best (1 ml/350 g body weight, orally, twice per day). Live culture yogurt will help, but not cure (especially if the infection is severe enough) a yeast infection. Crop infections can be deadly, as they slow and stop the movement of food through the digestive system, eventually starving the bird. There are no antifungals available that are safe to use on birds that are non-prescription… sorry… However, nilstat (nystatin) is not expensive at all.

So, it’s more likely we’ve got a chicken with a crop infection, or a soured crop as they’re called. One way to tell, is to sniff their breath and see if it stinks. I tried this, but getting a chicken to breath up your nose isn’t the easiest of things to achieve. I didn’t smell anything. However, it could still be an infection. This will mean buying prescription drugs from our vet. We haven’t yet needed a vet, so we don’t “have” a vet, but there are a few in the vicinity.

However, this afternoon we will first try giving the hen some olive oil. If it is an impacted crop this, with a little bit of gentle massage, should help. If she doesn’t seem better we will have to look to the vets.

I’ll let you know what happens….

This morning I dragged Daisy outside to help me grapple with a seething mass of netting that arrived from Harrod Horticultural for me. I ordered a bunch of butterfly netting to put over the frame I made a couple of weeks ago around my veg patch. I’m slowly turning it into a protected raised bed; particularly important to protect the little plants from the great stomping feet of the chickens. It also means that when I grow brassicas in that bed next time, they won’t be destroyed by caterpillars from cabbage white butterflies, one hopes.

An hour and a half of measuring, nailing, pulling and tugging and the net box was finished.

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The picture above shows the finished product on the right! You can see in the foreground, in front of the composters, I plan to create a similar bed with more left over wood and the rest of the netting. We recently got around to cutting up a bunch of tree offcuts and creating a beetle haven, next to the composters. Hopefully only good beetles will live there and the bad ones will stay away! I guess either way, it will give me something to take photos of.

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The greenhouse has a set of growbags in them looking rather bare at the moment. Somewhere deep inside them are some seeds just waiting to burst forth, but nothing of yet. Hopefully, once germination takes place, we should have two planters containing peppers (two different varieties), one containing chillis, and another containing small melons (cantaloupe). I have another planter that has yet to be opened and I’m still wondering what to put in it. I considered tomatoes, but we don’t eat many tomatoes (we usually make them into pasta sauces!). Not sure… ideas always welcome!

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Daisy spotted this nice sweet pea container at the garden centre last week. I think it’s rather cute, and the sweet peas are growing on well. It should look really nice once it’s flowering.

Here’s some other pics from around the garden:

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This is Vicious. She’s the boss chicken and picks on one of the other chickens (Puffy) rather too much – hence her name. When the Sun comes out and the temperature warms up, the chickens like to lay back, lift their wing and let the warmth get under their feathers. It doesn’t look too comfy though.

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This pigeon doesn’t have a name, but perhaps he/she ought to. It visits our bird feeders very regularly to get a good feed of sunflower hearts or fat snack. It roosts in the fir tree at the back of the garden near the veg patch and I wonder if it even might be nesting up there. It’s getting quite used to us now and didn’t fly off when it walked around the corner to find us sitting on the bench enjoying the sun. Daisy got this photo of him.

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Daisy planted some tulips a while ago — way before I was in Amsterdam — and they’re only just starting to flower now. They’re a lovely colour and I think will provide quite a display once they all open up.

It’s great now we’re into daylight savings time and the evenings are at least long enough to get some stuff done outside and enjoy the greenery. It didn’t get dark until nearly 7:30 tonight.

Daisy and I spent some of the evening being rather un-eco-friendly and booking a bunch of cheap flights out of the country. I have to go to Barcelona, Valencia, and Florence in the coming 2 months, which is far too much travelling for me, but it’s made better when Daisy can tag along on the odd occasion and have a short holiday.

It’s bed time now… and I still haven’t done any web-work that I’ve been saying I’d do all day! Tcsh.

Last year, Daisy and I were in Wales when my Dad phoned me to tell me that the new food we had bought for the chickens wasn’t going down well, and that they were steadfastly refusing to eat anything. At the time, it was an easy fix: just go and buy the food they did like, which isn’t organic. Dad sprinkled some of the corn around the chickens’ pen for them to peck at, or, in fact what actually happened, for them to completely ignore and allow to grow. Since then, the sack of corn has been taking up bags of space, literally, in our garage. However, one day, Daisy had the bright idea to soak some of the corn so it would soften and maybe then the chickens would like it. Sure enough, they did. Examine key evidence below.