A sad day at RCC

I am heartbroken to report that Jerry the hen was put to sleep this afternoon. She became ill on Friday with peritonitis and despite mine and Kate the vets best efforts we were unable to save her.

She spent the weekend living in the house, sitting on my lap watching TV. I don't think she cared much for the Joe/Gail storyline in Corrie but seemed to really enjoy Glee.

I now have to put my sadness to one side and start looking for some new companions for poor Margot who is having a thoroughly miserable time as a flock of one.

I'll keep you posted.

The Cove

I'm not one for crying at films; Mr Swift is the sensitive creature in our house. He sobbed for the last 15 minutes of Monsters Inc. - I could have died with shame.

However, yesterday I cried my eyes out for most of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cove (now out on DVD). I won't spoil it for you but it surrounds the Herculean efforts of a group of filmmakers and activists to expose a horrific dolphin culling practice in a Japanese coastal town. If it doesn’t win the Oscar I will be mightily outraged.

Go watch it now, but remember to have your hankie to hand

Psycho chicken

It’s a milestone birthday for my Mother this year (clue - she’s past 50 and not yet in her 60s....). so in order for her to go away on holiday, safe in the knowledge that all’s well at home, I have agreed to spend the week in Shropshire looking after her six hens – Rose, Petal, Hyacinth, Esmée, Violet and Gertrude.

One small problem – it would appear that Hyacinth has anger management issues. Since coming into lay she will attack anyone who disturbs her during this delicate time. My poor Mother had to fend her off with a bucket as she tried to climb her arm and peck her face off.

Imagine me, alone in this house for a week. How long do you think it would be before anyone found me; lying at the foot of the coop, a veritable chicken buffet?

I’m thinking of investing in a taser.

Operation run improvement – stage one

Never let it be said that i don’t deliver as promised. Here are a few pics of the extended run with its new flooring. Unfortunately not all went to plan due to situations way beyond my control . The ground was far too wet to lay paving slabs underneath the pond liner base so this has been shelved until Spring. The corrugated roofing has yet to materialise so I’ve been keeping the bedding (aubiose – wonderful stuff) dry with an IKEA shower curtain and the Eglu winter shade. Not the most ascetically pleasing set-up but as Pluto said, necessity is the mother of invention.

The girls seem to be enjoying the extra space and have really taken to the perches i've built for them using terracotta window boxes and old brances from our apple tree.

Just in case you were wondering quite how bad the run had got i took this photo just before we got started on the new set-up.  Bearing in mind my chickens get a thorough clean-out every Saturday morning this is still what i ended up with after a few weeks of snow and sub-zero temperatures - a woodchip/mud/newspaper sludge.

Thankfully, with the new system in place the run will be lovely whatever the weather - hurrah!     

 

Goldfish vs chicken

Happy New Year from RCC! Thank goodness that snow's buggered off.  Right, back to blogging business. Let's start the New Year with a bit of sarcasm.

I am always highly amused by the following statement on the Omlet (Eglu makers) website:

If you are looking for a low-maintenance easy-going pet then your search is over - chickens are seriously chilled out! No need to take for walks, chickens quite happily look after themselves and unlike a rabbit or goldfish, Omlet chickens come with a lifetime supply of eggs.

So, ‘seriously chilled out’ chickens are quite happy to look after themselves....hmmmmmm.....now that’s utter nonsense. I know what the wonderful team at Omlet are getting at here; Chickens do happily get on with their lives during the day whilst you’re at work. But they’re far from low maintenance and my ‘lifetime supply of eggs’ has, as expected, dried up for the winter.

As regular readers will know i have both chickens and  a goldfish - the much maligned, enigmatic Ron. Here are a few examples of where Ron wins hands down in the maintenance stakes:

1. I have never had to apply Vaseline to any of Ron’s extremities. I have, however, had to commando crawl through a muddy, poo-ridden run at 6.30am in sub-zero temperatures to apply Vaseline to Margot’s comb to protect her from frostbite (Of course, when I say ‘I’ here, I do in fact mean ‘Mr Swift’)

2. Ron has utter respect for hangovers. M and J have to be let out of their run at 7am every day, without fail

3. Ron has never performed a ‘brassica massacre’. M and J stripped my raised beds of every last cabbage and broccoli plant in under ten minutes thanks to Mr Swift’s half-arsed ‘supervised’ free-range session

4. Ron has never caught lice off the filthy local feral bird population resulting in thrice-weekly spraying sessions with Johnson’s anti-mite spray. Mr Swift and i have inhaled so much of that stuff that if we ever had children they'd have three heads and five arms each

5. Ron has never tried to tunnel out of his tank. M and J are digging holes to rival ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ in The Great Escape.

6. Ron has never wandered into the kitchen and laid an egg on the floor, much to the horror of the onlookng resident cat

Seriously, I love my hens and my Eglu to pieces but any would-be chicken owner should go into this endeavour with their eyes (and their wallets) wide open.

Speaking of the girls’ wellbeing, they have been less than impressed with the snow/ice conditions. My woes have started since the big thaw begun. Thanks to several weeks of frozen conditions rendering cleaning out their run utterly impossible what was once was a lovely, tidy space with plenty of wood chippings is now a muddy, stinking hellhole.

I can’t possibly let my girls live like this so next weekend ‘operation run improvement’ begins (really couldn’t think of anything snappier). This involves myself as chief engineer/site supervisor; Mr Swift (builders mate/chaiwalla); industrial paving slabs; one Eglu classic run extension; corrugated roofing panels; sand; bungee cord; plastic lawn edging; horse bedding; half fence posts; Ikea shower curtain and a pond liner*. Before and after photos to follow.... my DIY-obsessed father will be so proud.

*A prize for the person who produces a detailed expanation of how each of these components will be utilised, the use of diagrams will secure you extra marks.

Ho Ho Ho from RCC HQ

Hello everyone, just a very quick post to wish you a Merry Christmas. Hope your stomachs are as bulging as ours and your hangovers as mild.

I tried to gather the gang together for a family portrait but the bird/cat/goldfish logistics were too much to cope with. So, i leave you with a picture of my crimbo dinner which contains many RCC herbs and veg and a distinct lack of roulade. Happy Holidays!

Wool envy

I'm crap at knitting - there, I’ve said it. Phew, sometimes just being honest with the world is wonderfully refreshing.

It's not that I don't like knitting; it's just that there are several key skill sets to be a good at it that I simply don’t possess:

1. Patience
2. Creative flair
3. The ability to keep count

So, it's with great envy that I admire the handiwork of those more competent than I. Take for instance my amazingly talented colleague Rebecca. Now, that's a girl that can knit! Her pièce de résistance is tea cosies. This is extremely fortunate as I have a teapot in desperate need of a jumper. So, over our Departmental Christmas curry we struck up this reciprocal deal - one tea cosy for a supply of River Cottage Croydon eggs. Brilliant, everyone’s a winner.

Like most of these crafts Rebecca's obviously learned this skill from her Mum. I became aware of the full extent of Mrs Glover’s knitting talents when Rebecca sent me the following photos on Friday.

Mrs Glover and her fellow members of the Little Chalfont (evening) Women’s Institute knitted this incredible nativity scene for the children of St George’s school.

Wow – Ladies, I salute you. These are quite simply the most awesome knitted items i have ever seen! I'd like to single out the ginger Archangel Gabriel and the wise men with the wispy beards for a special mention.

I'm so inspired by your efforts I’m going to continue to add to the 3.5 inches of scarf I managed to cobble together back in Winter 2007. Wish me luck.