Behaviour

Over the last two weeks, both of our animals have really surprised me in how they’ve handled us having builders here and so on.

Hound has been amazingly well behaved. Yes, sure, she’s been in the car during the day (with windows open when necessary) but she’s just slept. Now we’ve observed before that she’s actually probably just a lazy cow when we’re not around, and spends most of the day sleeping, but she’s proved it now. She has a basket in the back of my car, and just hops in there when the workmen arrive, and sleeps all day. I take her out for a walk at lunchtime if possible, but even then she just goes back in the car and sleeps.

Even more surprisingly, she hasn’t been a stress-head when anything goes on around her, either. The postman has walked past the car (with her in it) every day, and she hasn’t reacted at all. Window cleaners, deliveries, cesspit-emptier, skip – they’ve all gone past the car and she hasn’t reacted at all. In fact the only thing she barks at when they go past on the road are horses – for some reason she really hates horses – but that’s it. Nothing else disturbs her at all.

Psycho Cat on the other hand is really pissed off with the entire thing. He’s been stalking round the house, attacking things, and generally being a complete pain in the arse. He is seriously unimpressed with the entire thing – and is, I think, finding it all quite traumatic. He’s certainly coming to me in the evenings for more of a fuss and reassurance than he usually does.

Today though, the plumber is replacing radiators – which has also necessitated a ladder up into the loft. Psycho Cat disappeared. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?) Yes, he’d climbed the ladder, and was exploring the loft. Only he hadn’t thought about how he was going to get back down, so instead was yelling from the loft hatch for someone to come and get him.

He put up a struggle about coming down though – obviously thought that even though I’d got hold of the little pillock, he was going to fall, and kept digging his claws into the edge of the loft hatch. It ended up with me freeing his claws again and then quickly bringing him down below the level of the hatch, at which point he kind of relaxed and gave up a bit, with nothing to cling on to, just trusting me (a little bit) to bring him down to ground level. And then I’ve also moved the ladder – it seemed sensible.

He’s still not happy, mind you. So I’m sure he’ll find somewhere else to hide before long.

Nicknames

Somewhere along the line in the last three or four months, I’ve ended up giving Hound a new nickname. Herself always calls her “Pop” for reasons unknown, and until recently I did the same.

But for some reason or other, I’ve changed the name for her, and to me she’s now “Podge”. It doesn’t mean anything, because of all things she could be, fat isn’t one of them. Ever. She eats more now than she ever did, and it’s all a lot easier than it used to be but still, “Podge”? I don’t know where it came from, I’ve no idea at all.

Still, she answers to it, and Herself doesn’t object to it either, so it works for me in all aspects.

Now I just wish I could work out where it’d come from…

O’Neill Coat

Many, many moons ago I bought a fantastic coat from O’Neill. (In this case ‘many moons ago’ means back in 2000 or 2001, I can’t quite remember) It’s a fantastic coat, a big wool duffel coat thing, thick wool, padding, the lot.

The thing is, I hardly ever wear it. It’s so warm, I usually only wear it about once a year. Of course when I need it, I really need it, but it’s not needed that often.

This year though, I’ve already worn it twice – the second time being last night while walking Hound round the fields. Incredibly bloody chilly, what with the wind and the snow just starting to come down. And the O’Neill coat was fantastic, I stayed warm and dry. OK, I looked like Kenny from South Park, but who the chuff cares, I was warm.

And really, that’s all that matters.

Broody

One of our hens has gone broody – she’s lying all day on the nestbox (although she’s been up for food and water) and is quite grumpy when anyone goes near her.

In fairness, it’s not unexpected – Light Sussex’s are one of the breeds (apparently) that do get broody on a fairly regular basis, so it’s not really a surprise. In some ways it’s quite funny, really. It does mean that we’ll be down to two eggs a day for a while, but again that’s nothing entirely bad either.

Just one of those things – and quite fun, really. I do feel slightly – and I really must point out that it’s only slightly- guilty about her being all broody and wanting to hatch eggs that have no chance at all of hatching (we’d need a rooster/cockerel for that task) but there’s no way we’re ready for having a whole herd/flock of chickens at the moment. We’re quite happy with just the three, and letting them get on with their lives.

All part of owning chickens, really.

Patchy

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

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

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

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.

Quietus

Sanity has returned to the house – guests have gone, the place is tidy again, and Hound is calm. She’s been fairly stressed with people around, not knowing what’s going on, so she’s been a barky pain in the arse since Saturday.

But now today she’s fast asleep (well, except when we get deliveries of either post, or parcels) and a lot quieter than she has been. She’s also eaten a whole bundle of food – again, with being stressed, she hasn’t eaten a lot all week without coughing it all back up again – and is generally back to being more settled.

So yes, all told, sanity has returned. For a while, anyway.

Second Layer

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, on Christmas Day Gladys started laying eggs.

So that’s two out of three now, and all’s good with the world.

Jabtastic

Today I’m working from home – and the first task of the day is getting Hound and Psycho Cat to the vets for their annual jabs. So that’ll be fun.

Still, at least it’ll mean that the job’s out the way. We’ve already had to put it off twice, so it’s now something we don’t have to remember again ’til next year. Yay.

Bird ‘Flu

In a fit of fantastic timing, within a fortnight of us buying The Girls, a farm was found to hae the H5N1 strain of bird ‘flu. Luckily it was about 20 miles away, so we fall well outside the 10km ‘surveillance zone’ that was put in place – and so also was the place that we’d bought The Girls from, which also made life a lot easier.

As it is, they’re settling in well in their new home. I still need to put up a bit of shelter over their food and water trays – we could leave them inside the coop, but for the moment haven’t done so. I’ll probably sort out some cover/shelter for them on Wednesday when I’m working from home.

Of course, if we’d been in this surveillance zone, the birds would have been supposed to be kept inside their coop (or outside so long as it was covered, and wild birds couldn’t get any access) along with their food and water, which isn’t a situation I’d be overly happy about. The coop we bought is actually suitable (apparently) for up to four birds, so it’s big enough, but still not something I’d have been happy about. As it is, we bought the chickens because we want them to trot about, even if “only” within the limits of their run, and had/have no desire to keep them confined further. Fortunately, we haven’t had to do this, but if we had I would’ve put up some tarpaulin (something we seem to have loads of) as cover, and still let them get on with their daily business.

We still haven’t decided whether to put ourselves on the DEFRA register of poultry owners – we don’t need to, as we’re nowhere near being commercial bird owners/dealers, nor do we have more than 50 birds (Bloody hell fifty birds in our place? That’d be a nightmare) but we could sign up voluntarily. It would mean that we get rapid and up-to-date information aout bird flu, but at the same time it means that DEFRA would know where to come in order to go through with a cull…

Still we’ll see. For the moment I think we’ll be sticking with how we’re currently doing it, as it all seems to be running smoothly so far. We moved the coop over the weekend as they’d covered their area of run during the two weeks we’ve had them – and there’s a lot more garden and veg patch for them to cover before we have to go back to the place they’ve already dealt with so I think they’ll be good for a fair while yet.

Bird Progress

We’ve had the chickens for a week now (and it looks like our timing may have been as piss-poor as ever – of which I’ll write more later. Turns out that for the moment we’re OK, well outside the 10km ‘surveillance zone’) and they seem to be settling in fairly well. They’re slowly learning to use their perch to sleep overnight, rather than the bloody nesting box, and we’ve (probably) still got a week before they start laying – that’s according to the people we bought them from, who should know rather more than we do on this subject at the moment.

All three seem to be OK though, and have been trotting about the run throughout the day, eating and drinking with no problem. I’ve got some odds and ends to do with them tomorrow when I’m actually at home during daylight hours (for the first time in nearly two weeks) including putting a cover over at least part of the run, so that food doesn’t get wet. And yes, take some photos of them as well.

Oh, and the names? Gladys, Flo, and Elsie. Or collectively “The Girls”. No particular reason – other than that all three are the names of our grandmothers. (One of mine shares the same name as Herself, so we’re not using that one, for obvious reasons) It seemed somehow apt.

Dry

Just in case anybody cares, No, we’re not in the areas of East Anglia expected to be hit by heavy flooding this morning.

We’re well inland, actually, and all should be fine. Mind you, it was feckin’ windy last night and this morning, although again no harm has been done to the place. We’d probably have lost the tarpaulin covering the front of the wood-store if I hadn’t had to go and check the chickens this morning, but other than that all’s well.

Mind you, I also think that I’ve left Psycho Cat outside this morning – I’m pretty sure he went outside, and I didn’t see him come back in – so we’ll have a very grumpy/cold cat when I get home this evening. Hey Ho, it’s his choice to go outside and not come back when called.

KFC

Well, so far the chickens seem to be settling in OK. It took a while for them to come out and explore the new run, but they’ve now done so, so I’m actually a lot happier. Yes, I’m sad like that (among many many other ways as well, of course)

Because of their reluctance to come out, I didn’t get the chance to get any photos of them yesterday, so that’ll have to wait a few days now, which is the downside of leaving before sun-up and not being home ’til sun’s gone down in the evening. The weekend’s looking pretty busy at the moment too, but I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity to take a couple of photos. That’s the plan, anyway.

So yes, new additions to the household, and so far all’s looking good. We’ll see how things work out.

Peace and Quiet

Yes, we can finally say that the house we bought was the right decision.

There’s been one or two firework displays that were audible, but nothing close by, and it’s been lovely. Hound’s been quiet, non-stressed, and hasn’t needed her usual (for Bonfire Night) tranquilisers at all. First time in five years that she hasn’t needed them, and that’s worthy of note in itself.

We’ve been out to Holkham beach today, which was lovely as well, but we haven’t needed to do the full Hound-exhaustion programme of previous years, which is another bonus.

Instead, she’s just laid around the house, asleep, and hardly reacting at all to fireworks. I think we had one or two barky fits, but that was it. And really, that makes this place ideal for us. Happy Day.

Snoozy Pooch

For whatever reasons, it’s obviously been a busy (and tiring) weekend for Hound. She’s currently fast asleep in her basket, with just the occasional wake-up and look-round thing going on.

It’s very sweet – and gives us both an excuse to do Not Much, so that Hound can snooze on. Not that we needed much of an excuse, to be honest.