Théo and the chickens des Sauches

[ManueB]

I'd do that. You know, she may get better. She may just be fighting off a bug or (non-reproductive tract) disease that is challenging her so hard that all her resources are dealing with it, leaving insufficient calories for reproduction. I speak from experience; ill birds here sometimes take refuge or comfort in a nest box, they didn't go in to lay.

I am almost sure her issue is in the reproductive system. Her laying issues have been going on for five months now and slowly getting worse. Today she finally passed an egg, a huge elongated thing, and she almost instantly got colour back on her comb and skin.
I am trying a higher level of calcium supplement for a week. She actually laid the day after I first supplemented her so maybe it did help - maybe it was just a coincidence.

I used to buy bread made with spelt in Catalonia. It makes the best Marmite on toast one can imagine.

I love spelt bread, both the kind we have here and the darker damper one they have in germany and northern Europe.
I eat it with my neighbour's fresh goat cheese and our bee's honey. It's more local than marmite .

The boar is back and he has eaten in two nights two thirds of the 75 kilos of potatoes we planted! Tonight my partner is waiting for him with a rifle in the woodshed. I kind of hope he doesn't get him because I'm not sure how we will deal discreetly with a dead boar over 100 kg that we are not allowed to kill at this time of year.

Some of the hens are still showing signs of thinking about turning broody : Chipie, but she is still not really sitting, Lilly, Laure, whom I least expected to, and...Merle. After ten days laying she has obviously decided to try again. I feel bad that we don't let her when she is so stubborn, but we really don't want more chickens.

On the other hand I really wish Lilly would turn broody for good because we have a problem with her. She has lost and broken so much feathers on her back that she is beginning to have a small scratch from Gaston's mating. But I know from Piou-piou that a small scratch can turn very quickly into a real wound. And the other issue is that her foot abscess, which we though was healed, seems to be swelling again a bit. It's a bit complicated to isolate her because we are already isolating Blanche, and Lilly has been bullying her badly, so we can't put them together just outside the chicken yard. If she decided to sit, she would rest her foot and stay away from Gaston for a while.

Lilly- you can sort of see the broken feathers on her back under which is a big bald patch.

Alba and Kara.

Laure was so enthralled in her dustbath that she forgot to bark at Théo.

A Blanche serie- she has had several chances to doze in the sun these last days and that seems to make them good days.

What ? Are you bringing food ?

Let me see if I can eat this.

Oh no, it's an unknown chicken face on a screen- must peck !

Lilly and Kara wondering how Lulu and Mélisse managed to cross the mesh that protects the baby lavenders.

I saw a dustbath scene I found strange yesterday between Théo and Merle. The video doesn't really manage to show why. Merle was stuck underneath Théo ; she was panting, and very pale, and slowly grooming his mane like she was in a complete trance. I know grooming is a thing, but apart from the four pullets I bought (Lilly, Alba, Kara, Nieva) and Caramel before she died I never saw any of my chickens doing it during daytime.

 

[Molpet]

The boar is back and he has eaten in two nights two thirds of the 75 kilos of potatoes we planted! Tonight my partner is waiting for him with a rifle in the woodshed. I kind of hope he doesn't get him because I'm not sure how we will deal discreetly with a dead boar over 100 kg that we are not allowed to kill at this time of year.

Might have brought the family to feed.

 

[RoyalChick]

I am almost sure her issue is in the reproductive system. Her laying issues have been going on for five months now and slowly getting worse. Today she finally passed an egg, a huge elongated thing, and she almost instantly got colour back on her comb and skin.
I am trying a higher level of calcium supplement for a week. She actually laid the day after I first supplemented her so maybe it did help - maybe it was just a coincidence.

I love spelt bread, both the kind we have here and the darker damper one they have in germany and northern Europe.
I eat it with my neighbour's fresh goat cheese and our bee's honey. It's more local than marmite .

The boar is back and he has eaten in two nights two thirds of the 75 kilos of potatoes we planted! Tonight my partner is waiting for him with a rifle in the woodshed. I kind of hope he doesn't get him because I'm not sure how we will deal discreetly with a dead boar over 100 kg that we are not allowed to kill at this time of year.

Some of the hens are still showing signs of thinking about turning broody : Chipie, but she is still not really sitting, Lilly, Laure, whom I least expected to, and...Merle. After ten days laying she has obviously decided to try again. I feel bad that we don't let her when she is so stubborn, but we really don't want more chickens.

On the other hand I really wish Lilly would turn broody for good because we have a problem with her. She has lost and broken so much feathers on her back that she is beginning to have a small scratch from Gaston's mating. But I know from Piou-piou that a small scratch can turn very quickly into a real wound. And the other issue is that her foot abscess, which we though was healed, seems to be swelling again a bit. It's a bit complicated to isolate her because we are already isolating Blanche, and Lilly has been bullying her badly, so we can't put them together just outside the chicken yard. If she decided to sit, she would rest her foot and stay away from Gaston for a while.

Lilly- you can sort of see the broken feathers on her back under which is a big bald patch.
View attachment 3820954
Alba and Kara.
View attachment 3820957View attachment 3820958
Laure was so enthralled in her dustbath that she forgot to bark at Théo.
View attachment 3820963
A Blanche serie- she has had several chances to doze in the sun these last days and that seems to make them good days.
View attachment 3820966
What ? Are you bringing food ?
View attachment 3820987
Let me see if I can eat this.
View attachment 3820989
Oh no, it's an unknown chicken face on a screen- must peck !
View attachment 3820992
View attachment 3820993
Lilly and Kara wondering how Lulu and Mélisse managed to cross the mesh that protects the baby lavenders.
View attachment 3820995
I saw a dustbath scene I found strange yesterday between Théo and Merle. The video doesn't really manage to show why. Merle was stuck underneath Théo ; she was panting, and very pale, and slowly grooming his mane like she was in a complete trance. I know grooming is a thing, but apart from the four pullets I bought (Lilly, Alba, Kara, Nieva) and Caramel before she died I never saw any of my chickens doing it during daytime.

Nice to see your irises are flowering.

 

[BDutch]

The boar is back and he has eaten in two nights two thirds of the 75 kilos of potatoes we planted! Tonight my partner is waiting for him with a rifle in the woodshed. I kind of hope he doesn't get him because I'm not sure how we will deal discreetly with a dead boar over 100 kg that we are not allowed to kill at this time of year.

How …..
Killing in spring is a crime for the law but what the boar does to your field is a crime too. And wasting so much meat is even a bigger crime.:
… bind the boar on a ladder, let it bleed out, cut it in two halfs, … process everything asap. Don’t tell anyone if you have a huge freezer. If it’s a she the meat should be fine. If he’s male I hope your partner can shoot well and the meat has no strange taste.

Lilly- you can sort of see the broken feathers on her back under which is a big bald patch.

Poor chicken.

Laure was so enthralled in her dustbath that she forgot to bark at Théo.

Oh no, it's an unknown chicken face on a screen- must peck !

Lilly and Kara wondering how Lulu and Mélisse managed to cross the mesh

My mama chickens don’t understand Tintin cant come through mash/hwc to the other side were they find tasty worms and such. They keep calling Tintin to come over for a snack.

And Tintin doesn’t understand why the mesh/hwc doesn’t open after walking up and down the fence at least 40 times. I try to teach him the Sesame-spell of Ali Baba. But unfortunately his pronunciation is not perfect yet. And the wire doesn’t open. When i don’t look for a while, he must have figured it out. .. And he is happily receiving treats from his mama’s.

The neighbour cats watch but they leave Tintin at peace. Of course he’s good protected by his mothers most of the time.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm not sure how we will deal discreetly with a dead boar over 100 kg that we are not allowed to kill at this time of year.

I can help! Wild boar is one of my favourite meats. Just pack a few bits up and send them here.

 

[lightm]

My chickens just don’t like fermented food. Not late autumn and not late spring.
The second time I used a mother from organic apple cider vinager. It worked fabulous and smelled real good. But even then they wouldn’t eat much of it.

What a great picture! You should post it the POW contributions thread Manue.
View attachment 3817117

I completely agree!! I love this picture so much.

 

[ManueB]

Nice to see your irises are flowering.

They began flowering at the beginning of april, and most were destroyed by the frost. The ones in the chicken yard are the last to bloom so they didn't have flowers yet when it froze. And the two tone one I really like never came out. Are yours flowering now ?

Killing in spring is a crime for the law but what the boar does to your field is a crime too. And wasting so much meat is even a bigger crime.:
… bind the boar on a ladder, let it bleed out, cut it in two halfs, … process everything asap. Don’t tell anyone if you have a huge freezer. If it’s a she the meat should be fine. If he’s male I hope your partner can shoot well and the meat has no strange taste.

I can help! Wild boar is one of my favourite meats. Just pack a few bits up and send them here.

It's a complicated and kind of long and tedious story.
First, the boar didn't turn up yesterday so it is still alive. One point for .

When it destroyed a good part of the garden in september, we asked the hunters to kill him. They are supposed to regulate and stop game from causing damage.
They shot and missed him twice. The thing is, we are never sure what really happens when they say they miss. If they do touch the game but do not kill it, they never talk about it. It's not good for their reputation. They leave a bleeding wounded hurt animal walk away and what's more, it becomes unfit for human consumption. The first time they missed the boar my father's partner was there so we know they really missed it, but not the second time.

Now, suppose my partner does kill him and it turns out not to have any old wounds.
We don't have any proper butchering and skinning knife. We could easily borrow them but here people always talk. Killing it would not only be illegal because it's not the hunting season, but my partner's license is 30 years old when they are supposed to be renewed every year, which means it's like he doesn't have one. So we really, really don't want anyone to know about it.

Our freezer is small and vertical with storage boxes. Even a rabbit needs to be cut to fit in there - we bought a freezer to store dinner portions of our garden's veggies, not game. So we could definitely only keep small pieces of meat. My partner doesn't eat boar- not many people like it around here.
The boar is an old male so it would need to cure outside for four or five days. This, in our place, means dozens of buzzards / vultures flying around daily. That's how we know when the hunters make a kill. That is how everyone know !
The two persons who could have been able help us to bleed it and butcher it from my partner's close family have both have had serious health issues, which means they wouldn't be up to it now.

I told my partner in September that securing the whole perimeter of the property was going to be a very long job. Some places are really hard to access. It's takes about an hour to carefully check the whole fence. And when he first began securing the fence he did not anchor it sufficiently deep and about a third of what he did was for nothing. So now the fence is only about two third secure. My point of view was always that we need to fence the garden. I was ready to pay for either an electric wire or more fence. A much smaller perimeter right in front of our house would be a lot easier to secure, but my partner has decided he doesn't want a fence around the garden. He is both terribly stubborn and overconfident. It's something I can love or find terribly aggravating about him depending on circumstances. Anyway I'm typing this in the dark in the woodshed taking the first shift of night watch for the boar...but it seems unlikely I will be able to send a boar's shoulder to Bristol.

No chicken photos today but some from my morning run. For the first time since two years ago, I did a longer loop down the valley that I used to do all the time when I was in better shape. It was lovely but hard for my ego that it took me three hours when I used to do it in 2h30.

 

[RoyalChick]

They began flowering at the beginning of april, and most were destroyed by the frost. The ones in the chicken yard are the last to bloom so they didn't have flowers yet when it froze. And the two tone one I really like never came out. Are yours flowering now ?

Mine are a few weeks away from flowering - and I think that is consistent with last year. The weather here has been very odd - we had a short hot-spell and now it is quite cold and a lot of rain.
Mine are native irises and are quite tough so I am optimistic all will be well with them.
I will post you some photos when they come out.
I need to transplant some. They thrive when I dig out a hole in the middle of a mass of them - it is like they all get to stretch their toes. And I need some to keep weeds down around the house.
Basically, if it is solid irises nothing much gets a look in and it means I don't need to do any weeding!
Trouble is it is so wet that it is very hard to do anything in the garden - I just sink into the heavy clay mud - so I keep putting off digging them up.

 

[MaryJanet]

They began flowering at the beginning of april, and most were destroyed by the frost. The ones in the chicken yard are the last to bloom so they didn't have flowers yet when it froze. And the two tone one I really like never came out. Are yours flowering now ?


It's a complicated and kind of long and tedious story.
First, the boar didn't turn up yesterday so it is still alive. One point for .

When it destroyed a good part of the garden in september, we asked the hunters to kill him. They are supposed to regulate and stop game from causing damage.
They shot and missed him twice. The thing is, we are never sure what really happens when they say they miss. If they do touch the game but do not kill it, they never talk about it. It's not good for their reputation. They leave a bleeding wounded hurt animal walk away and what's more, it becomes unfit for human consumption. The first time they missed the boar my father's partner was there so we know they really missed it, but not the second time.

Now, suppose my partner does kill him and it turns out not to have any old wounds.
We don't have any proper butchering and skinning knife. We could easily borrow them but here people always talk. Killing it would not only be illegal because it's not the hunting season, but my partner's license is 30 years old when they are supposed to be renewed every year, which means it's like he doesn't have one. So we really, really don't want anyone to know about it.

Our freezer is small and vertical with storage boxes. Even a rabbit needs to be cut to fit in there - we bought a freezer to store dinner portions of our garden's veggies, not game. So we could definitely only keep small pieces of meat. My partner doesn't eat boar- not many people like it around here.
The boar is an old male so it would need to cure outside for four or five days. This, in our place, means dozens of buzzards / vultures flying around daily. That's how we know when the hunters make a kill. That is how everyone know !
The two persons who could have been able help us to bleed it and butcher it from my partner's close family have both have had serious health issues, which means they wouldn't be up to it now.

I told my partner in September that securing the whole perimeter of the property was going to be a very long job. Some places are really hard to access. It's takes about an hour to carefully check the whole fence. And when he first began securing the fence he did not anchor it sufficiently deep and about a third of what he did was for nothing. So now the fence is only about two third secure. My point of view was always that we need to fence the garden. I was ready to pay for either an electric wire or more fence. A much smaller perimeter right in front of our house would be a lot easier to secure, but my partner has decided he doesn't want a fence around the garden. He is both terribly stubborn and overconfident. It's something I can love or find terribly aggravating about him depending on circumstances. Anyway I'm typing this in the dark in the woodshed taking the first shift of night watch for the boar...but it seems unlikely I will be able to send a boar's shoulder to Bristol.

No chicken photos today but some from my morning run. For the first time since two years ago, I did a longer loop down the valley that I used to do all the time when I was in better shape. It was lovely but hard for my ego that it took me three hours when I used to do it in 2h30.
View attachment 3822209View attachment 3822211View attachment 3822212View attachment 3822213View attachment 3822217

So many factors, it's a tricky situation! I can't see a way to prevent the community from finding out. Maybe come clean and ask for help?

I hope the boar's hunger for potatoes will change your partner's mind about fencing, once he's had time to think about it. Is there something you can do to make the switch easy for him?

Not to mention the boar's family.

Do your neighbours use electric fencing? If so, it's no wonder the boar prefers your garden.

 

[ManueB]

Mine are a few weeks away from flowering - and I think that is consistent with last year. The weather here has been very odd - we had a short hot-spell and now it is quite cold and a lot of rain.
Mine are native irises and are quite tough so I am optimistic all will be well with them.
I will post you some photos when they come out.
I need to transplant some. They thrive when I dig out a hole in the middle of a mass of them - it is like they all get to stretch their toes. And I need some to keep weeds down around the house.
Basically, if it is solid irises nothing much gets a look in and it means I don't need to do any weeding!
Trouble is it is so wet that it is very hard to do anything in the garden - I just sink into the heavy clay mud - so I keep putting off digging them up.

I think it doesn't matter if you transplant them later in the year. We transplanted some at my family's mountain cabin in July and it worked like a charm.
I've discovered we have some white ones growing far below, so I also want to transplant some.
The two tone iris came out today but it's life was unfortunately meant to be a short one !

I hope the boar's hunger for potatoes will change your partner's mind about fencing, once he's had time to think about it. Is there something you can do to make the switch easy for him?

Yesterday my partner (and I) were so tired we decided to sleep until midnight as the boar had always come at dawn.
When I came down at midnight there was a huge, huge crater instead of a soon to be vegetable garden . Obviously this old boar doesn't need to be taught new tricks by humans.
So my partner has accepted we need a fence around the garden. We have borrowed some electrical netting from Gaston the farmer temporarily that we need to put up tomorrow.
However, my partner has also moved our smallest mattress in the woodshed as he intends to sleep permanently there and brought out the buckshots. Illegal as illegal goes .

Do your neighbours use electric fencing? If so, it's no wonder the boar prefers your garden.

Nobody use that here. It's a relatively recent thing, this problem with deers and roes and boars, maybe 15 years ago. 30 years ago there was no big game here at all, they were implanted and fed by the hunters. Most people don't fence either their properties or their garden. Some people are beginning to now, but mostly with standard mesh fencing.
Our closest neighbour who doesn't live here but has a garden uses temporary construction fencing, I think it's called ? (We call it Heras fencing after the brand). Very effective but looks like a jail.

We were a bit upset this morning but the sun was shining and the chickens happy to see the light after another rainy day. However in the afternoon we had a small thunderstorm and a short but epic hail episode. The only thing left in the garden, the strawberries, were a sad sight. Most of the chickens had taken shelter in the run and coop but Théo was outside and he got in a panic when he saw and heard the hail stones. I had to grab his tail to catch him under the table and bring him inside the coop.

When we went to pick the netting at Gaston's place, I saw the four three days old chicks that hatched from the eggs we gave him. All the chicks are yellow, so they likely did not take from their mum, but from Gaston ! I also saw the chicks from the broody who looks so much like Chipie, they are a few days older.
Because of the weasel, they have moved all the chickens from the shelter where they used to sleep, to the old sheep barn, which is much more secure. The weasel has mainly killed pigeons, but has wounded many hens.

Little devil wants to be a momma yet again.

We tried to put Blanche next to Chipie who was dust bathing but she doesn't have the strength to even pretend anymore. After a few days being better, she is going downhill again. It feels like a senile old lady- all she wants to do is eat treats and nap on our knees. She doesn't want to see the other chickens anymore. It's the first time I see that sort of reaction.

I think the extra calcium may possibly be helping Kara. She has laid twice since and I find that her skin and comb don't look as unhealthy.