Now the snow has finally gone and the land has gone all mushy again, everything seems to think its spring time. The birds are singing like there is no tomorrow and the bulbs are pushing green spears through the sodden (and still slightly chilly) ground. But... last year we had a lot of snow in early Feb and again in March, so think some prudence would be wise.
The cats are much happier and whereas Charlie would only go out for calls of nature (and I don't mean the birds) with company when we had snow (no idea why, odd cat), he is now out and about at all hours bringing us nice presents! The Chickens are happy too, one was looking decidedly ill while we had the snow but she is a new chicken now, tail and head up, scratching about and looking good. The only hangover from the snow is that when it was cold she stopped perching at night and took over one of the nest boxes (full of straw) as her new boudoir, she has clearly decided that this is a much nicer place to sleep and hasn't perched since (think we might need to keep an eye on this and encourage her back again as sleeping in the nest box isn't good for hens). She also seems to have lost the ability to hop; chickens can jump quite high if they want to (ie if you dangle a nice worm in front of them they get achieve quite a height, will try to get a picture but usually over very quickly); since the snow this hen can't seem to do this anymore and for a bit this meant that she couldn't get onto the ladder leading to the hen house; she has now learnt how to get onto this without jumping up to it. Don't know why this should be, but other than that she is back to normal.
Getting interested in sheep now and hope for a good book on sheep for my birthday. Lamb prices are going up and will get even higher when we new spring lamb comes on the butchers slabs at Easter. You can also milk them (probably not the same breed, hence wanting the book to find out more). Milk is also quite an interesting idea; there was a good programme on Radio 4 last Sunday/Monday about micro dairies (we have heard of micro breweries, why not micro dairies), when small producers have a small herd and sell direct; we have an old dairy here so could we turn this farm back to how it was - interesting times.
The cats are much happier and whereas Charlie would only go out for calls of nature (and I don't mean the birds) with company when we had snow (no idea why, odd cat), he is now out and about at all hours bringing us nice presents! The Chickens are happy too, one was looking decidedly ill while we had the snow but she is a new chicken now, tail and head up, scratching about and looking good. The only hangover from the snow is that when it was cold she stopped perching at night and took over one of the nest boxes (full of straw) as her new boudoir, she has clearly decided that this is a much nicer place to sleep and hasn't perched since (think we might need to keep an eye on this and encourage her back again as sleeping in the nest box isn't good for hens). She also seems to have lost the ability to hop; chickens can jump quite high if they want to (ie if you dangle a nice worm in front of them they get achieve quite a height, will try to get a picture but usually over very quickly); since the snow this hen can't seem to do this anymore and for a bit this meant that she couldn't get onto the ladder leading to the hen house; she has now learnt how to get onto this without jumping up to it. Don't know why this should be, but other than that she is back to normal.
Getting interested in sheep now and hope for a good book on sheep for my birthday. Lamb prices are going up and will get even higher when we new spring lamb comes on the butchers slabs at Easter. You can also milk them (probably not the same breed, hence wanting the book to find out more). Milk is also quite an interesting idea; there was a good programme on Radio 4 last Sunday/Monday about micro dairies (we have heard of micro breweries, why not micro dairies), when small producers have a small herd and sell direct; we have an old dairy here so could we turn this farm back to how it was - interesting times.
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