Updates

Well, it has been more than a week since I posted about the rooster box that we set up for my beautiful big Australorp Cockerel, ChopChop. He's getting used to the routine of being put into his box each evening, and let out again in the morning. As far as crowing goes, I only hear him if I happen to be awake, so that means I have not heard him crowing before 8am since we put him into his box. He does crow while he is in there, but the sound is somewhat muffled. I have not heard from the neighbours about whether he is still waking them at 2am, so if I don't hear from them in the next few days, I will pay a visit and ask if all is well now. I'm hoping we've solved the problem.

Last Wednesday, I went broody and set 8 eggs to incubate in the el cheapo incubator I bought last year. I candled them at day 3 but the results were pretty inconclusive. I'm hoping that perhaps Boomer managed to fertilise some of the eggs before we sold him, and decided to set some to see if that's the case. It costs next to nothing to run the incubator and the eggs are a lot less precious and expensive than the previous batch I hatched. I'll keep the blog up to date. I think I might have just a couple that are viable. I will candle them again at day 7 and see how it looks.

Yesterday, I realised with horror that I have not wormed my flock since August last year! This could explain the unthriftiness in a couple of the birds and since the youngsters are now 6 months old, I decided I needed to get onto that asap. I gave the most unthrifty of the hens a dose of Moxidectin immediately, and this morning I put Piperazine into the drinking water for the rest of the flock, and wormed ChopChop with a couple of wormout pills. I am usually very careful to adhere to a three monthly worming system, but for some reason, time has slipped by while I was not paying attention. I will need to redo the whole flock in a fortnight to make sure that I have killed off all the possible worm burden from the birds.

We are once more up to our ankles in mud and water in the back yard, with three solid days of rain that has barely let up. I've given up trying to keep the chickens in out of the wet and have been letting them out to forage in the rain. They seem to have enough sense to get under cover if it really pelts down, and they spend a lot of time under the denser foliage of the mulberry trees when it's only light rain. They're getting a bit wet, but I have been locking them up early and feeding them oats to help them warm up so they are dry by the time they go up on the roost for the night.

There's not a lot going on other than these things. Life at Hensington Palace ticks by and everyone is relaxed and happy. After the 'interesting times' we had for the past few weeks, this is quite a refreshing break!