Steel Kitten

Poor Blossom is back with us

***If you haven't entered the giveaway yet, you have until midnight TONIGHT (Friday 20th November 2009) GMT to enter here by leaving a comment. Tell everyone!***

It was a sad day yesterday. We had to curtail the freedom of Blossom the hedgehog and bring her back into the house for the winter.

We'd done a soft release with Blossom weeks ago (soft release means putting a hog box full of warm stuff and the hog into a pen so it can acclimatise to the outside before complete release). Every day we'd put down food in her pen and each night it would be eaten. We stacked up extra hay, straw and fleeces inside the pen and she dragged them in. We wind-proofed that corner of the pen as well.

Three nights ago the food wasn't touched. The next night it wasn't touched. Had she hibernated? We weren't sure, but we knew that the hog box wasn't designed to be a hibernaculum - it's just a halfway house. Ideally she needed to make her own nest somewhere based on her own instincts of what she needed.

So yesterday afternoon we brought the hog box into the house to gently check that she was alright and was warm enough. We removed some of the bedding and gently put our hands in to see how warm it was - it was stone cold. Now we were worried. 

Could Blossom be dead?

We went deeper and deeper into the multiple layers of straw, hay, newspaper and fleeces trying to find her. Eventually a very loud hiss let us know she was alive and not hibernating. Much relief, but she wasn't as warm as she should be and hadn't eaten for a couple of days. I popped a hot water bottle under the box to heat it up and periodically refilled it during the afternoon. Early evening we began to hear sounds of scrabbling and knew she would be out soon, so we put her - box and all - straight into a rabbit hutch in the conservatory with some food. Tomorrow, we thought, we'll build her a very large nest in the hutch, but for tonight we'll leave her alone.

It was not to be.

Hedgehogs have an amazing ability to climb and squeeze themselves anywhere, but they lack intelligence to know that their spines might not let themselves get out of something they've squeezed into. Petal amply demonstrated that by squeezing her head and arm through an air hole in her plastic box and almost strangling herself when her spines didn't allow her to reverse. Now Blossom had decided to have a go and rival Petal's daft accident.

Martin went to check on Blossom and Twinkle before we went to bed as he always does. All animals are checked last thing and first thing when Martin gets up at 5am. Suddenly Martin's shouting for me.

"SARAH! SARAH! FLAT HEDGEHOG.HELP" 

I zoomed into the conservatory thinking "Oh God. She's got out and he's trodden on her" But quite a different sight greeted my eyes.

Blossom had climbed and squeezed herself between the wooden hog box and the front of the wire of the hutch, a gap of about 1.5 inches! She was completely flat and stretched out with her furry belly outward towards us and all four paws fully stretched to the corners and hanging onto nothing. Her nose was poking out through the mesh. She was well and truly stuck.

While Martin open the hutch door, I put my hands under her to catch her as she fell. She was fine, if not a little indignant at having been on display for the world to see, and we quickly arranged a new bed for her and removed the wooden hog box. Then we weighed her. She's lost nearly 50g from when we put her outside. She huffed and hissed and puffed at us as she wriggled her way into her new nest.

The morning light revealed she's not really eaten anything overnight again so today we start tempting her to eat and building her back up with cooked chicken.

We are very disappointed the release failed, but it's more important to keep her alive as the population has taken such a bashing in recent years and we want to give her the greatest chance of living a long life as a mother of many baby hedgehogs.

Some of who will no doubt end up in our conservatory being over-wintered one day ,but c'est la vie!

300th post blogiversary and a giveaway

Check out the new Steelkitten blog banner above! Isn't it wonderful! The superbly talented illustrator Kat Whelan over at Shoestring Garden did this design for me. It was my present to myself - this is my 300th post since I started this blog back in April 2007. And I'm in the mood to celebrate and say thank you to you all for reading (and not running away screaming) with two little giveaways:

1) A blog banner by Kat Whelan. Kat will work with you to decide the three main elements that most represent you and/or your blog and which would work well in the final illustration. She'll then put her talents to work creating the perfect blog banner for you. As Kat owns the copyright on all the final artwork, she provides you with a high resolution jpg of the final illustration which you can resize for your blog.

2) A copy of John Seymour's Guide to Self Sufficiency and Joy Larkom's Grow Your Own Vegetables  plus a stash of non-hybrid seeds (Kitchen Garden and Salad Garden Collection) from the Real Seed Catalogue (If you live in Australia or another country with strict laws about importing seeds, I'm happy to sort out a seed order for you from a preferred seed supplier within your country.)

The giveaway will run until midnight 20th November 2009.

All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment below and let me know if you want to be entered into one or other, or both giveaways. If you don't have a blog, please leave me an e-mail address so I can contact you, but don't worry - I will keep it confidential and it won't be published with your comment.

I'll be pulling the names out of a hat on 21st November 2009. 

Good luck all!

***

Now, before I forget, I must say a big thank you to Fiona and Danny over at Cottage Smallholder. Do you remember I said I won their competition? Well, they are clearly mind readers, because these great seed envelopes turned up the morning I was sat in the living room sorting out my motley collection of seeds from the garden. 

I'd been making do with a flimsy assortment of envelopes. 'Making do' mostly involved grabbing the envelope, forgetting seeds were in there and tipping them all over the floor. There are notable food crumbs among my seeds now after scrabbling around on the tiles and under furniture picking them up. I've dropped my delphiniums twice, but no more. Not with these sturdy little numbers. 

Thanks Fiona and Danny. Much appreciated!

***

Nope, you don't have double vision. There is now a second chicken who looks remarkably like Marybelle. Except her name is Georgia. She was Marybelle's pen mate at the poultry centre and we bought her as Marybelle looked a bit lonely and scared trailing after Bisto and Oxo.

And this is Dusty and Lulu, 16 week old White Sussexes. We just wanted them because they're white and they looked so scared in the poultry centre!

All six chickens are now forgaging and sleeping together. The frantic pecking and pained yelps have calmed down now they have arranged their pecking order. The hysterical forays into next door's garden has stopped. Harmony reins. Oxo and Bisto are moulting. Oxo has no feathers on her head and the subject of much mirth between me and Martin. She's all beak and baldness.

***

Isn't this such a cute picture of Blossom.

Both her and her brother Filbert have made the weight for winter and were released into the garden over the last couple of weeks. Twinkle still remains and although doing well at 488g, will not make the 600-700g weight before the really cold weather sets in. So once again this winter we're constructing a warm hibernaculum in the conservatory for a hedgehog.

***

Finally, I got up close and personal with my knitting machine again recently and these were the result. Long fingerless gloves - literally fingerless.They just roll over my knuckles and I love 'em.

I even wear them in the house. It's like having extra long jumper sleeves. Fabulous.

Say hello to Marybelle

Everyone, meet Marybelle, our new 19 week old Rhode Rock, a hybrid cross between a Rhode Island Red and a Plymouth Rock. She's got a lovely petrol sheen to her feathers and is extremely talkative. She's discovered grass this afternoon and was so excited.

I mentioned in a previous post that we intended to get some more chickens at some point, but hadn't really firmly decided what breed or from where. Then events occurred today which persuaded us to do something quickly.

Oxo is under the weather. I opened the coop this morning to find a large quality of a jelly-like substance (egg albumin?) and a huge terrible mess of droppings and milky/yellowy fluid. Bisto looked fit and well, but Oxo was quiet, subdued and hiding quietly in the nest box. Not my normal fit and dominant girl at all.

Oxo doesn't give us eggs anymore - she stopped for her moult back in January and never came back on the lay again. I'm unsure whether the mess is her attempting to come back onto the lay or something more sinister like egg peritonitis. When I gave her food she ate it fine and is drinking, but she doesn't want to come out of the coop and has spent most of the day in the nest box. Her vent is moving constantly and her rear end is messy. Suddenly I had a real fear that if Oxo died, Bisto would be left on her own. She's very sensitive, likes company and took it badly when Paxo died. This propelled us into action. Bisto has to be introduced to more chickens for company, and the chance to make a special friend. Oxo, being dominant, just doesn't seem to have that kind of bond with Bisto.

We went over the inside of the old coop with a blow torch to kill off as many more of the remaining mites that we could, and then added lots of mite powder with a thick layer of woodshavings. Once finished, we visited our local chicken centre to look for a new friend for Bisto. 

We very quickly spotted Marybelle - confident, talkative, statuesque - and gave her a thorough check for trickle vent, scaly leg and a few other parasites and disorders. Then we popped her in a box and brought her home, her talking all the way. I guess she thought she was worth something a bit more luxurious than a cardboard box. 

We'll keep her in the coop run for about a week until she knows it's her home, although we intend to put Bisto in with her sooner than that. They seem to get along through the wire and spent about an hour walking round and eating together calmly with Marybelle occasionally exercising her lungs. 

Oxo will be a different proposition - I intend to put her in quiet isolation from tonight until she recovers and then try her after Bisto and Marybelle have been together a while. I know that she was not amused when she came out of the coop briefly this afternoon to investigate the noise Marybelle was making, and attempted several hard pecks whenever Marybelle's head came within an inch of the wire. She spent about 30 minutes walking around the coop matching Marybelle's pace and staring her down.

Intimidating stuff.

In a couple of weeks we'll be picking up a couple of Light Sussexes when the centre gets a new batch, so that will be even more for Oxo to get annoyed about.

Poor Oxo. It's tough at the top.

Red Mites - the curse of the chicken keeper

  copyright www.stackyard.com

Disgusting. Vile. Nauseating. Big words for such small critters. But these are the words I associate with red mites. They're vampires. They emerge at night from cracks and crevices to feed off the blood of the chickens, weakening them and eventually killing them. From a small number of critters, huge legions of them can develop in a couple of weeks.

And I have just committed an environmental sin to get rid of them.

Let me explain. Up until we went to Malta, we didn't have a problem. I cleaned the droppings from the chickens out every day and completely changed the bedding every two weeks. I checked the chickens every week for signs of nasties or pecking problems. They were clean and tidy girls (apart from Bisto and her infamous trickle vent).

Paxo went off to a friend to be looked after while we were away. When she came back, things started to go wrong. We believe she was housed at night in a hutch which had red mite and she brought them back.

It was our fault. I got very busy with work and for a few weeks I did the droppings every day and that was it. Having been clean and parasite free for so long, it never entered my head this could be compromised by Paxo living elsewhere for a week so I wasn't unduly concerned about my lapse in completely cleaning them out or checking them over.

It was only when Paxo dropped dead I realised with shock there was a major problem. And it wouldn't be melodramatic to say that Martin and I will live with the guilt for the rest of our lives.

When we completely cleaned the coop put after we found her body in it, the litter was infested with mites. The bedding moved. By the time we finished we were covered and ran down the garden stripping off as we went and jumped in the shower. Two adults frantically scrubbing themselves down, little red streaks of blood appearing here and there if we crushed them.

How could I have missed them? How?? I was busy, I was rushed, I did a quick clean that's how. And Paxo, already weakened from her illness, paid the price for my carelessness.

It's been a good two months since Paxo died and I've been fighting these buggers on a daily basis. Bisto and Oxo were immediately treated for the mites with a mite deterrent powder and Ivermectin (which renders mites sterile when they bite the chicken so eventually they die out), then moved into a new clean coop. Every day I check the coop when I open them up and every day I kill what I find. And I still find them.

Unfortunately, despite the weekly Poultry Shield, a dose of Ivermectin and powder, the mites are still with the chickens. I cleaned them today and killed a colony of about 50. It looks like the mites are resistant to Ivermectin, which would make sense as the friend who took Paxo in for the week has many other rescue animals and uses it frequently.

The old coop was sprayed with the mite spray 'Poultry Shield' which kills up to 96% of mites with each application. Up until Sunday I had sprayed the ruddy thing FIVE times, each time using five litres of mite killer. STILL they came back. I could not fathom where they were hiding. I took out every superfluous piece of wood from the inside and sprayed them and the area behind them. I sprayed it inside and out. I turned it upside down to spray. I sprayed it until rivers of the stuff poured out of the coop. Two weeks later they would be back and visibly crawling along the wood when I opened the nestbox.

So last Sunday I took drastic action and saturated it inside and out with creosote.You can no longer get creosote - it is a banned substance. In fact I think it is illegal to possess it. But I was desperate and I found an old tub of it in the shed that the previous owners have left behind. 

It's been a week and it's airing at the moment, but I've just looked in and they are crawling on the underside of the flap. Actually backstroking while lying in deckchairs is probably closer to what they're doing.

At this point I don't know what to do. I've heard about something called Ficam W I may try. A blow torch is also an option. There's no point buying a new coop - the mites will just infest that.

Disgusting beasts. Horrible. I don't think I've ever wanted to kill anything so much.

***

Just a little note, Martin has passed all of his blood tests with flying colours - just the scan to go now. However, I have a problem with the way our GP surgery operates. I do wish they would take blood on the spot when someone is ill and not ask them to come back a few days later so the nurse can do it. How are they likely to find the cause of something - especially is it could be a transient but repetitive problem like an inflamed gallbladder or gallstone blocking a duct - when the patient's symptoms have subsided and they appear to have recovered. Until the next time that is. When Martin will visit the GP. And be booked in for a blood tests a few days later. When the symptoms have subsided.

Sigh.

Is this rocket science? Am I wrong? Our GP doesn't put patients on time limits - they take as long as they need to with each patient. It takes about two minutes to take a vial of blood and a further two for form filling that goes with it. Outsourcing tasks gone mad as far as I'm concerned.

The rise of Hogzilla

Every evening we pile high two side plates with cat biscuits and put them into our homemade hog stations. And every evening they are cleared.

We're not sure how many we have in the garden, but we feel that the ginormous girth of this fella might account for a fair proportion!

We've never come across this one before, but he's HUGE (well we think it's a he. At over 1.5kg (!!) it could only really be a boy as girls don't get that big!) I put a brick next to him to give you a sense of scale.

He was totally unconcerned about us - even when we weighed him and treated some of his ticks - and just carried on eating. No huffing or spitting. 

This must be Gonzo's other half. In fact, I suspect he's the other half of most of the lady hedgehogs in the area and lucky girls they are too! He's a hunk.

****

Our evenings have a routine at this time of year that revolves around the hedgehogs. Every evening at 6pm Martin or I clean out Filbert, Blossom and Twinkle, change their bedding, weigh them and feed them, a process that can take around 75 minutes. Dinner is often a smorgasbord of meat (mince or chicken), cat biscuits, chicken cat food and treats like apples, raisins, peanuts and bananas. 

Filbert's doing pretty well - he's now 468g and putting on around 20g a night the little piggy. He'll be ready for release at the end of next week. Blossom has had a slow start but is doing better now - she's 352g and will probably be released in a few weeks time.

But Twinkle and Petal have not done well.

Petal nearly died. She crawled through 1.5 inch air hole in the top of her box and we found her wedged, hanging by her neck and gasping her last. Hedgehogs are brilliant climbers and very agile, which she proved by climbing up on top of her box, stretching up with her little paws to gab at the edge of the air hole and pulled herself up. She got her neck and one arm through then got stuck. We had to saw through the plastic container to get her out.  She's now fine, but refused to eat, so she's gone to a hedgehog carer in Wellingborough who is tube feeding and looking after her. 

Twinkle also suddenly gave up eating and was losing 10g a day. We've no idea why. She had been eating and putting on weight fine. By the time she hit 135g we were getting desperate. We finally found out by the 'buffet' approach she adores cooked chicken, so we're stuffing that into her in very large amounts. She's slowly improving and is now 207g.

She'll be with us over the winter I'm afraid. There's no way she can put on her hibernation weight before Bonfire night. 

***

So, now is the time for all of you to keep an eye out for these little guys. If you see them, pick them up and weigh them please. If they weight less than 600g, they won't survive the winter and need help. Either get them to a carer or take them in yourself. If you decide to do the latter, there's a few great hedgehog forums out there who can advise you or leave me a comment and I'll email you with some advice on how to do it. It's a big responsibility, they smell, they're very messy and you may have to worm them and treat some ticks, but it's hugely rewarding and you're doing something positive to help our wildlife. 

Those hedgehogs that are the right weight will probably appreciate some extra food prior to hibernation, so put down some cat biscuits and maybe some cat food. But no fish flavours please - only flavours they have a chance of finding in the wild.

It's all pogs and veggies this week

We found a baby hoglet in trouble a few days ago. She was lying on her side in some long grass not far from the nest. She was barely moving apart from a few spines twitching when the breeze blew across her. Martin brought her in and we administered some first aid - a warm water bottle to lie on, a little warm water to drink and some quiet rest in a cat box.

She became quite perky after about an hour, enough that we could examine her. She was smaller than the others- only about 50g so possibly the runt - and had some nasty ticks behind her ear which could have prevented her from putting on weight. She also had an swollen eye that started oozing pus. 

Petal,as she's now called, has probably been poked in the eye by something when snuffling in the under growth so we bathed her eye with boiled cool water and a cotton bud and put in some antibiotic eye drops (we've collected quite a medicine cabinet for the hedgehogs!). After a good scoff on some kitten food she wriggled down into some warm fleeces and went to sleep.

She was so tired after what was probably a harrowing night for her she didn't even wake up when I sorted out her ticks and bathed her eye again. Just lay on her side gently snoring while I cleaned her with a cotton bud. She's put on 40g since Saturday, so hopefully it won't take any more than a month before we can get her to 600g hibernation weight and and then we'll release her.

Then last night, we had the surprise addition of her THREE siblings (Twinkle, Blossom and Filbert), who are now tucked up in the conservatory asleep in a rabbit hutch. Two weeks ago we weighed one of them while it was snuffling around the garden to get an idea of size and age (they were all roughly the same size so we figured it was a good starting point). At 100g we estimated they were about 3/4 weeks old. Then we weighed one of them again a couple of days ago and it was still hovering around the 100g mark. Despite feeding them every night right outside their nest, they've put on no weight. At 6/7 weeks old it's not good enough and they'll almost certainly perish in the cold.

Hedgehogs only hibernate once they hit 600g in weight, a sort of physiological failsafe. Unfortunately, it means many autumn babies never hibernate and are left searching for food all winter during a time when there is very little food out there. Eventually they perish of cold and starvation. So to ensure they get to the correct weight in time for winter hibernation, we removed them from the nest yesterday and have started feeding them up on kitten wet and dry kitten food plus peanuts and fruit.

Hoggyopolis here we come again!

****

Been trying to get some serious veg gardening out of the way this week in addition to pog rescuing.

The potatoes are up and they're not half bad either. Considering we've already eaten about half of what was in the ground this year, this little lot will probably see us through until Christmas (we don't eat a great deal of potatoes). That means what I planted will see us through six months since I started digging them up in June.

The bed was given a good dig over and some dried grass, compost, fire ash, and blood fish and bone were dug in. After smashing up the big chunks of soil, I transplanted the pathetic specimens of beetroot that had been attacked viciously by the chickens too many times and planted some more fast baby beetroot, kale,baby spring cabbage, baby carrots and mange tout. I reckon that I can get a bit more veg out of the bed before the cold weather really hits. I have fleece to cover the bed when it does and some more to wrap around the fencing.

The tomatoes are impressive and provided the base for one of the most tasty pasta sauces I think I've ever cooked. These big meaty numbers will certainly be on my growing list next year.

I also wanted to show you my Swiss Chard. I took a picture a couple of months ago when it was bursting with vigour and ready to pluck.

Then like an idiot I wandered off to download the picture and forgot to fleece it back up. The chickens moved in for the kill and had possibly one of their most exciting days since they arrived.

Rather irritatingly, despite scoffing 7 Swiss chard plants, none of them suffered with tummy upsets. I was severely miffed at their ability to handle so much illicit greenery without punishment.

Clearly crime does pay.

I've also been bottling greengages and pears like a fiend for quite a while now and adding to the jam store. I've found we have a yellow plum tree in the hedgerow over the back field of all places and am in the process of picking some for jams. Unfortunately, they are riddled with coddling moth larva so preparing them is hard work, but still. Free food and all that so I persevere.

Talking of free food, my mother has discovered a secret stash of filberts. Like any good forager, she won't reveal the source, BUT luckily for me, her teeth are playing up and she's not risking hard foods at the moment so I get them. Yippee!

****

Finally, Martin and I went to Barnsdale on Bank Holiday Monday and I was adopted by the resident cat. Note the delicate part of my anatomy he's sticking his claws in!

 

We've had a little visitor....

 

While out at the end of the garden trying to clear a path through the wilderness yesterday I was suddenly aware of a large prickly pog watching me a few feet away near the compost bin. As pogs are never supposed be out during the day my first instinct was to grab it and get it in the house in case it was ill. 

It was so tame - it let me pick it up and didn't struggle at all or roll into a ball. It kept trying to disappear up my sleeve and into the crook of my arm like Gonzo used to. Once in the house and firmly ensconced behind the bathroom sink pedestal, it proceeded to scoff a bowl of cat food before crawling into a box with fleeces for a short nap. We could then see the spot of nail polish on its back - it was Gonzo!

While she was asleep, we hunted around the end of the garden for a nest and found a tunnel into the bottom of the compost heap.

 

 

By lying face down in the dirt among the rotting plums and crazy wasps, I managed to peak in and saw a tiny little prickly heap with its bum hanging out of the main nest area. We were so excited! We released Gonzo after about an hour and she shuffled off round the back of the nest and disappeared inside the heap. 

 

Then again today at around the same time, she came out and two little balls of spikes followed! Baby pogs. 

 

Then another two came out of the entrance, sniffed the wind, turned tail and shot back in again and stayed there.  The two brave ones were so cute! They're about 3 weeks old and had a great time sunbathing, sleeping, scratching, munching plums and rolling around in the grass until Gonzo came back after an hour and hurried them back in the nest. 

 

Then at 8:45pm Martin and I sat up camp at the end of the garden with coffee to wait for them all to come out. We didn't have to wait long. In the dusk light, four little dark bundles emerged, scoffed the cat food we left for them and then wandered around our feet and the bottom of the greengage tree. After 40 minutes of listening to them plum munching and playing, we left them to it and walked very slowly back to house shining the torch in front of us all the way. 

You know what this means don't you? Underweight babies come Bonfire night.....

Lovely, but barmy

Work has been barmy lately. Lovely, but barmy. The 60-page website morphed into an 80-page and I managed to get it to 3rd draft stage in just over three weeks. The client is over the moon so I'm a happy bunny too, but it did mean that all I've done for weeks is work. I've seen far too may 5am starts and 12am finishes. 

Still...a few things have happened that I want to share.

1) I had a house guest. My niece - fashionista and fan of all things vampire - came to stay for a week (hee hee, she's going to kill me when she sees this picture!).

She very graciously accepted an uncomfortable blow up bed on the floor of my hobby room, the latter of which disappeared under a storm of clothing and shoes as all girls' bedrooms do at that age. In fact mine still does and I'm more than twice her age. She had a go at sewing. She sniffed through my bookshelves. She got to squeeze the chickens and feed them naughty things. She cooked her own food.

She left behind this hideously squeezed tube of tomato paste that I felt obliged to try and straighten out and squeeze neatly from the bottom. I failed. The tube was too far gone. These damn fist grippers - they drive us neat bottom squeezers mad ;-))

2) My leeks got planted...finally. I heard them whisper their thanks as they eased their cramped and starved roots into the moist fertile soil.

3) The lavender and buddleia in Zone 1 got a stay of execution. They were due to be ripped out and replaced with a design I had planned about 18 months ago based on dwarf Thumbelina lavender and standard roses, but the bees and the butterflies were going mad for them. I've never seen so many feeding at once -I counted around 30 butterflies one morning. To hell with the Zone work that week. In the end I left everything alone for nature to enjoy.

4) Martin and I were forced to clear the back of the kitchen garden in a hurry yesterday when this cute little girl was found out in daylight choking to death with bindweed wrapped around her throat.

She weighed 450g, so she's not Fozzie or Gonzo. She's definitely a spring baby, but whether she came from our girls or the existing mother we don't know. After a bowl of beef cat food and a good day's sleep under fleeces in a box in our bathroom, she was released into the garden at dusk the same day.The last thing we saw was her little spiky bum wriggling at high speed into long grass by the compost heap.

5) Finally, Martin and I attacked the fireplace today to replace a broken throat lintel, which guides the smoke up the chimney and provides support for the bricks above the gap. It suddenly fell into the grate last winter and you can see how badly the smoke has damaged the wallpaper as it escaped up behind the mantlepiece without the lintel to guide it.

Just as an afterthought, I cleaned up the soot with sugar soap. That led to giving the chimney breast a lick of white paint...

...which unexpectedly morphed into a paint job on the alcoves on either side of the fireplace because suddenly I passionately hated the previous owner's choice of colour (orange) and happened to have a tin of Ecos organic paint in Zucchini under the stairs and a paintbrush to hand...

...and then I brought in my favourite painting by New York artist Albert Camurati. This is an original oil and was commissioned by someone at great expense for their kitchen.

Quite why the former owner chose to put it into an auction, where I paid the staggering sum of £3 (and got an ink sketch by the same artist thrown in), is still unknown. I know the former owner was gutted because he stopped me afterwards on the way out of the auction hall to tell me about the painting and sketch, and he looked gutted. I'm sure he thought they would go for more money. But not many people are interested in veggie pictures.

It's not painted yet behind the TV - that happens tomorrow when we'll be pulling the TV out to sort out some of the cables...and of course we have a huge amount of tidying away still to do as evidenced by the amazing amount of belongings crammed into that side of the room!

Now of course the rest of the room looks shabby, so this week I'll make my way slowly round it replacing the magnolia walls with fresh white paint. This room is due a major overhaul next year, but until then this will do.

I love spontaneous painting. Great fun.

Paxo's last flight

We knew it would happen sooner or later, but didn't think it would happen so suddenly without warning. We found Paxo dead in the coop this afternoon, possibly from a heart attack or stroke. She wasn't ill, she seemed fine last night and very active and running around yesterday. 

Well I say she was fine, but she's never been back to 100% since her illness a few months ago. She had her appetite again and was putting on weight, but she wasn't the gun-ho, beak-in-there girl we used to know. She was quieter and more reserved, sometimes she needed feeding separately from the rest if they pushed her out of the way, but she was on the mend definitely. 

We buried her under the Photonia bush because that was her favourite spot. Come rain or shine, she had her little area under there she'd scratched out of the ground to nestle. Bisto has been inconsolable for most of the day, calling and hunting for Paxo round the garden. We found her several times in the conservatory hidden in a corner making comforting noises to herself and rocking backwards and forwards. Several times Oxo squashed in there and sat with her to keep her company, talking to her and trying to get her come out. When you see them like that, it hits home very quickly how they must suffer terribly in battery cages. 

Poor Paxo. She sure was a good chicken. 

A trail of blood

 

***do not read this if you are squeamish***

It's enough to make your heart stop.

You come out of your back door thinking about a hundred and one things you have to do and are confronted by a heart stopping sight - a blood splash. You look beyond it and see another and another....

You follow the blood splashes round the corner to the garage and back down the ramp. Then across the patio.

To the chair. Where there's a lot more blood....

...and more that's dripped underneath.

There's more in a tiny weeny gap in the corner...

You breathe a sigh of relief. It must be an animal, not your husband. Unless he's been crouching very small underneath the bird table.

The chickens have spotted you and come running. Zoom, zoom Paxo. Zoom, Zoom Bisto. Zoom, hop, zoom, hop Oxo. Aha!

I grabbed hold of the limping bird and had a good look. She'd managed to rip one of her nails off down to the quick. A clean off with antiseptic and a quick spray with iodine.

Then a plaster and a mini bandage.

Off she trots. With just Paxo. Where's Bisto? In my haste I left the back door ajar.

A bowl of cat food has been devoured. There were wet chicken footprints on the hallway tiles. A spray of water drops where a fowl has had a good feather shake...

House rule number 1: NO CHICKENS IN THE HOUSE.