Little Cotton Rabbits

watch out chicken ladies!

Hmmm, looks like our chickens have been having an unwanted visitor in the night. The recent covering of snow has preserved the evidence.

There are foxy footprints all over the garden and all over the roof of the chicken house! I'm very glad that we popped the house on a concrete plinth or I might have had an unpleasant discovery this morning!

Poor old Butterscotch looks a little terrorised by the night-time scratchings so she'll be getting some extra corn this afternoon and a few grapes too. Must get round to knitting her a hat - she's still a little bald from her autumn moulting.

 

and then there were two

Thanks so much for the good wishes for both Amy's ballet performance and for poorly Toffee. Amy had a wonderful time and really enjoyed performing on such a big stage. We were really proud to see her up there giving it her all.

Unfortunately Toffee did not have such a good weekend. I inspected her foot and leg and thoroughly bathed it but there was no sign of cuts, bruises, breaks, nibbles (although  there's no way any rodents could get into our run) and she still had movement in the toes and could just about weight bear on the leg. Unfortunately though she stopped eating the regular chicken food on Saturday and so I put her on the rickets diet that I'd read about - she seemed to enjoy this but was still only eating a little. She wasn't showing other signs of illness so we made her a comfy woodshavings bed and waited to see if rest would help.

Sadly though she died during Sunday night. I'm hoping that the absence of other symptoms means that she didn't have an infectious disease that the others might get but to play safe we've thoroughly cleaned everything and are dosing Mrs Black and Butterscotch up with vitamins. We're so sad to have lost Toffee but it feels a little better knowing that she had a good life here with lots of treats, a comfy home and a little love which is much more than most of her commercially bred cousins can dream of.

poorly little red hen

Poor Toffee has hurt her foot.

No-one is very sure how it happened but it seems most likely that she caught a toe when coming down the ramp one morning. She is limping and unable to scratch around as chickens like to do so is spending much of her day sitting.

 

Hopefully it's just a sprain and will start to get better soon but for now we're all taking care of her and the other two chickens are spending a lot of time sitting with her which is quite touching. I'm at a bit of a loss to know what to do but will see how she is after the weekend - I'm hoping she'll be OK. Apart from chicken nursing, we'll be spending the weekend preparing for Amy's ballet show on Sunday and I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to show off afterwards! Enjoy your weekend where you are.

sunday afternoon

It's been lovely and spring-like here this afternoon, appropriate for the first day after the clocks change for summer time.

Toby and I have been in the garden most of the afternoon - I've been planting out my lettuce seedlings, onion sets and sowing some carrot seeds and Toby has been swinging, bouncing and running around in his jammies and wellies!

He's also had fun helping feed the girls.

It's lovely to be out in the fresh air together and to kick off our veg growing season for this year.

tidy up time

The last few days have been spent in the garden where everything is winding down. We've picked the last of the tomatoes, courgettes, raspberries and carrots and have lots of onions now in storage. There are a few beans still producing, a couple of potato bags left to dig up and the cabbages, kale and broccoli are still going strong. But it definitely feels like we're getting down to the last of the yummies our garden has to offer us for this year.

We've had a bumper crop of grapes this year - although we mostly leave them for the birds as they're not very sweet.

 

Now the garden is being tided and cleared ready for digging in some compost to get everything ready for next season and then a nice winter rest. The chickens have been helping me tidy up - they do a great job of breaking up the soil!

 

It's been lovely to watch them roaming around outside of their run which is possible once again now that Toby isn't spending so much time in the garden (a small boy who likes to put anything in his mouth and run around barefoot does not mix well with large quantities of chicken poo on the grass!)