Almost Lost
Posted: Tue 22 January, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Getting Organised, Green 2 Comments »Over the weekend, I thought we’d lost one of our hens. We’d let the hens out of their run to have a wander about for an hour or so, and then sort of forgot that they were out.
So it was dark when I went up to see if they’d found their way back into the run, and into the nestbox – and of course, being thick chickens, they hadn’t. Two were asleep on the ground (so much for all the books saying they’ll try and get up to a perch before going to sleep) and I couldn’t find the third (Elsie) at all.
I put the other two into the nest box, and then looked all round the garden – but couldn’t see Elsie at all. I even looked over the end fence – although getting the idiot bird back from there would’ve been interesting, to say the least.
Eventually, we did find her. She was snugged right up in the corner of the garden, in the tiny gap between tool-shed and fence. It was a gap so narrow that I hadn’t actually thought she could get in there, which was why I hadn’t looked there properly. I still don’t know quite how she’d managed to get in there, and turn round (she was facing back out to the front, and I’m sure she didn’t reverse in!) but it’s certainly somewhere I’ll bear in mind as and when we “lose” her again – something which is likely to happen, as they’re going to (hopefully) spend more time outside their run as the days grow longer.
But I must admit to a fair amount of relief when we did find her – it would’ve been a very silly way to end up losing one of them.
Turkey Out
Posted: Wed 16 January, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Customer Services, Cynicism, Health Leave a comment »OK, so it doesn’t have quite the same ring as Chicken Out!, but apparently Bernard Matthews has decided to make more of their turkeys free-range, mainly in light of the public reaction to documentaries (talked about before on here) by Hugh Fearnley-Bellend et al.
Of course, if the birds had been free-range he might not have been hit quite so hard by the bird flu scare at one of the Bernard Matthews farms back in February 2007. But that’d just be me being cynical, of course.
Patchy
Posted: Fri 11 January, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 1 Comment »One thing I’ve noticed recently with our hens is that one of them is laying eggs with patches on them, either of a different colour, or a kind of gritty powder on them. I’m not sure what it means, but the books and sites I’ve looked at don’t mention it as anything bad, so I’m not too concerned.
It’s still odd though – so if anyone here does know what’s causing it, I’d be a lot happier…
Chicken Run
Posted: Thu 10 January, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 2 Comments »
Over the last few days, I’ve been watching Channel 4’s “Hugh’s Chicken Run. It’s not been pleasant viewing – not least because I find I get truly annoyed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – but to me it’s something important.
Now with Herself being vegetarian, we eat hardly any meat here anyway (I do have the occasional sausages, but not often) and we don’t have chicken at all, but before I moved in with Herself I can’t deny that I did eat a fair amount of it.
I’ve always found it truly disturbing the way chickens are raised for mass-production – and I think even more so now that we’ve actually got some chickens of our own – and I hate the idea of birds going from chick to slaughter in 39 days (the industry standard) with only 30 minutes of darkness per day in order to fatten them as fast as possible. (if it’s light, they eat – if it’s dark, they don’t)
As the first programme in the series showed, most people don’t know the conditions for breeding supermarket chickens (for example that the industry standard is 17 chickens per square metre of shed) and so I firmly believe that programmes like this one are essential for getting more people to know what it involves.
And that’s why I’m also linking to the Chicken Out campaign site – because I believe in this sort of campaign, even when it’s fronted by a bell-end like Fearnley-Whittingstall. (And there’ll be another post about him later, I think)
Exhausting Hound
Posted: Mon 31 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »We’ve spent the afternoon up at Wells-next-the-Sea, taking Hound out onto the beach, and doing lots of throwing of tennis balls for the idiot creature.
As with November 5th, we don’t yet know what the new place will be like for fireworks at midnight, so it’s best to exhaust Her Ladyship so she sleeps through whatever does happen. Last year we took her to Caister-on-sea, which was incredibly windy, but this year it was Wells.
She’s still active at the moment, but the plan is that she’ll pretty much collapse and sleep soon, and through the rest of the night.
Fingers crossed, anyway.
Obsessive
Posted: Sat 29 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Sometimes, Hound is truly bizarre.
Today, we’ve put up a new clock in the living room – Herself bought it a while back, but today’s when we got round to putting it up on the wall.
This evening, while lying on the sofa, Hound noticed the new addition, and started growling at it, then barking at it. She didn’t stop until I’d got up, taken the clock down, let her sniff it, and now all’s well.
But all in, it took her about ten minutes to notice the damn thing, once she was looking in that direction. Not bad, when it comes to an idiot hound, although when you take into account her borderline autism, I suppose it’s not overly surprising that she’s sensitive to changes in her environment.