CIWM Recycling Champion Award

Oh I am so excited! Once again I am up for this award! I am so pleased, for me, my family and for all the people and the children I work with :-)

From the organisers, The CIWM,

We are delighted to inform you that once again you have been short listed for this award and will be put forward as a finalist to our judging panel, who will be choosing the category winners and also the winner of the overall Award for Environmental Excellence. All the winners will be announced at the ceremony which takes place at the Dorchester Hotel in November.

Hope this time I have better luck actually getting to the event, though....

More "chick pics"

More pictures of the chicks from today.










The one with the spot on his head is the last one to hatch, who I had to help out the most....and guess what? he is a cockerel. The other two chicks are little pullets though :-)



See this one looks different? She is a little pullet. I can tell because Cream Legbars like many breeds are auto sexing on hatching, so the colour tells you what sex the chicks are. The black stripe tells me this is a female. Ruby Dorking ( in the background) looked just like this eggactly a year ago.....

Funny how life goes in a circle, isn't it?

Hatching chicks video

So.. 9 pm last night and Compostman and I have just bought the 2 part hatched eggs into the kitchen from outside, Renee Flemming is playing in the background and the dehydrator is running ( which proved handy later on!) Compostgirl was still awake so we called her down to see what was going on :-)



Chick 2 has just hatched as this clip starts, but Chick 3 is having trouble...so I kept dripping warm water on to it to help rehydrate the shell and membrane. The chick had a little drink as well, to help it recover from the all day struggle it had been going through.



Chick 3 is struggling so VERY hard here, but can't get out



We have put Chick 2 in a cosy box on top of the dehydrator to keep warm and dry off and by this point I am getting worried that Chick 3 is losing the fight with the shell.....



But HURRAH! I was wrong and Chick 3 struggles out of the shell and into the world.

Compostgirl was amazed as she has never seen this happen before. I have never helped to such a degree and we all found it a very moving experience to be a part of.

I love my life :-) I get to do such cool stuff sometimes :-)

The patter of tiny claws......

20 days ago I put 3 fertile cream legbar eggs under Broody Ruby Dorking. She has faithfully sat on them, refusing to get up and eat or drink unless I push her out of the broody ark every morning - she is a VERY dedicated Mum!



Yesterday was day 19 ( chickens typically take 20 days to hatch out) so I hoped something would be happening soon and when I went out to open up the hen houses, guess what? I pushed Ruby off the nest to make her get some food and drink, I looked at the eggs and.....one of the eggs had "pipped"! (cracked from the chick pecking at it from the inside)



Can you see the crack? Click on the picture to enlarge it!

I went back again a couple of hours later and ...surprise! a chick was there, sprawled on the nest. The other two eggs had cracked and the chicks were cheeping furiously from inside, but hadn't emerged from the shells yet.







See the little chick peeking out from under Ruby?

I wasn't worried about the other two chicks then, as it can take a few hours for a chick to emerge, but as the day wore on I did begin to be concerned. The chicks were active and struggling to get out of the shells, but examining the shells showed me they were VERY thick eggshell indeed. The worry here is that, the longer the struggle goes on, the drier the shell and membrane inside becomes and the harder it is for a rapidly tiring chick to push it off.... So, by evening I had decided if the chicks hadn't managed to get out under their own steam I would give them a bit of help. I wasn't going to pull the shell off them but I would try to rehydrate the shells with warm water, to help the chicks along a bit..





So I did. I dripped warm water on the shells to help the chicks get out. The extra humidity allowed them to struggle free and they managed to hatch themselves. When both the chicks had made it out of the shell we put them in a box on top of the dehydrator to warm up and then I put them back under Ruby to dry out and fluff up.




I think I have two pullets and a cockerel. Chicks! I love them :-) More piccies to come tomorrow ;-)

Busy with new chickens...

Hmm seems a bit dusty in here, are those cobwebs?
Sorry for not blogging lately, its a very busy time of year!

But...I really wanted to post up some photos of the new chickens! Well new-ish, as I have now had some of them for 3 weeks.

Bluebelle ( a Bluebelle),


Bunty (Rhode Rock)


and Mac (Sussex Star)


are (now) 18 weeks old and still just babies. They run around and flap their wings in a comical fashion when I let them out into the Orchard in the morning.

Ginger and Nutmeg (formerly Bunty) are now thinks 22 weeks old.


They are ISA Browns and very tame and friendly! Ginger has started laying but Nutmeg has not, yet.


Pearl the Leghorn is 26 weeks old. Pearl lays white eggs and is a bit skittish.



I went on a "Kill, pluck and gut" course last weekend at Cotswold Chickens, where I met up with a number of friends from the Omlet forum, and as well as bringing home a dressed chicken and a plucked chicken and a kilo of sausages I made, I also came away with 3 more pullets (I have no idea how the carrier got into my car ;-) )

Cinnamon is a Goldline


and together with Ginger and Nutmeg makes up The Spice Girls. The three have become friends and roam around getting up to all sorts of mischief!

The other two pullets, Cocoa


and Treacle,


are Black Stars, very pretty and gentle.

Broody Ruby Dorking is still sitting away, but I may well have breaking news about her soon.....