Goodbye to Pecky.

As I suspected, Pecky was on her last legs and passed away last Tuesday after spending all day Monday laying in the sunshine between the water and food pots. She was the last of our originals that we bought just over two years ago, and Alden's first chicken so he was quite upset.
Snowy and Dotty have both gone broody again just after they had started laying. One day I had four eggs, the next I was down to two. Mrs Dusty Bustle the Maran has started laying her lovely dark brown eggs again and Copper, the Black Rock, is the other layer. As for the Ducks, only Bubble is still laying.
The egg count is-
Chickens - 20
Ducks - 5
Pixie had a dose of colic last week but she got over it quickly and is fine now. We think she ate too much nice grass from the verges when we took her for a walk that afternoon.

Relocating Roosters

The chicks are getting quite big, 28 of them was becoming a bit too many for the tractor, they hadn't started squabbling but it can't have been far off.

So in anticipation I decided to recycle the children's old abandoned climbing frame which is now known as the Dalek.

We have placed it in the Sheep Paddock and last night we took the 5 male Curries and the 3 male Vorsprung Dork Techinics, (aka the Vorwerks and Buff Plymouth Rock/Sussex Hybrids) out of the tractor and put them in their new home, they will remain separated from the rest of the flock for a few days so they learn where their coop is, we may then let them mix again but we have already noticed some of the Curries are getting a bit optimistic with the hens, with this many roosters (We think we have 16 in total) we can't let that happen so if they can't act like Gentlemen then they will remain separated until we decide which we keep and which we will be eating...

We have left the Araucana,Wyandotte and Welsummer Roosters in with the rest of the flockas they are ,for now, behaving themselves (well the single Welsummer and the Araucanas are) and the others have not begun to crow yet.

A Vorverk was on sentry duty

 Leo and Mars looked on.

Red, Yellow and White Curries were having a nap

Purple Curry was out chasing a 'Daddy Long Legs'

Cad West 2nd helping

I went back to Cad West after lunch on Thursday, an excuse to take my MG V8 for a spin.

As we are approaching a bank holiday I did not expect to see many aircraft and sure enough the people up on the hill had only seen a single trainer and a helicopter during the morning.

Later in the afternoon I choose a really bad moment to go to the very top of the hill and look for a convenient bush!

A typhoon came in very fast, by the time I had turned the camera on it was already off into the valley :(

 However rumour had it some Apache helicopters were out there somewhere and sure enough after almost everyone else had left three of them arrived, the last was extremely low!

.

As I packed up to leave some of the local sheep started to make an appearance to reclaim 'their' hill top.

Eggs, Pecky and a Goose on the rocks.

Whoops! late with the egg count again.
Last week -
Chickens -  14
Ducks - 12

This week -
Chickens - 21
Ducks - 8

The ducks are coming to the end of their laying season but the chickens are speeding up despite a fair amount of moulting going on. I didn't count this one though,

 Poor old Pecky is a bit off colour this week. She is getting old for an ex-batt and is the last of my original chickens. She has been hiding in the barn and sleeping, and while she is eating a little, she is painfully thin, her breast bone is sticking out and there is no meat on her so not likely to survive the winter if she gets that far.

I gave her a nice warm bath and some mixed corn then let her wander round the conservatory for a while to dry off before she went back outside in the wind.

Catherine has ideas of becoming famous enough for a statue, here she is practising her pose,

and on one leg, it's her favourite perch.

And here's a family photo of the Chicks. Godzilla, at the front, has proved he is a cockerel with one of the Barnvelders, Legless, on the left, may be the biggest chicken in the flock but he's more interested in eating a nice bit of grass than fighting the 'Curries' for Top of the pecking order, and Boris, at the back, needs to lay a few eggs before winter.

Cad West

We went out today into the Welsh hills to find a site known as Cad West
we parked in the Car Park and then took the Sheep track up the side of the hill.

The grasses were setting seed and turning a very Autumnal looking Yellow and Orange!

The scenery was breathtaking.
In the distance was this 'Heart' shaped pond!

 

Alden found some Sheep and they instantly turned into balls of Wool!

 

 

 Before wandering off.

There was this odd rectangular stepped Cloud formation.

So all in all a nice peaceful place to sit and eat sandwiches and look around and do stuff.

 

But there were other people up on the hill with us all sporting cameras with long lenses......

 

 And hence the reason for the visit. Cad West is a designated low fly area and on any given weekday something interesting might pass under your nose through the valley below!

We saw a C130 and several Gnat Trainers.