The chicks are growing

Our seven chicks are now two weeks old and they are growing rapidly. The old aquarium into which we put them when they came out of the incubator had become too small for them so we planned to get a brooder cage. And then I saw a temporary solution to housing the chicks. Last week, some branches and timber were about to be incinerated on the neighbouring allotment. Amongst all this waste was a cupboard. The owners no longer needed it and had planned to burn it. They were happy for us to take it (and some of the timber).

The cupboard, turned onto its back, has made a great brooder cage and has provided much more room for the chicks. However, it will soon be put to another use: a quail house. Our plan is to get some fertilised quail eggs, hatch them and start producing quail eggs and quail meat. In the meantime, the cupboard is acting as a great home for the chicks.

Honey press

Yesterday, for the first time this year, my bees were relatively busy. A sunny break in the late wintry weather encouraged them to venture from the hives in search of pollen and nectar. Alas, it was not repeated today. The anticipated end to the over-extended winter is still anticipated. Whilst we had moments of sun today, the warmth was sadly lacking. The bees sensibly stayed inside the hives.

We have, however, two new additions to our bee equipment: a honey press and a wax extractor. A couple of beekeeping friends are moving to Qatar, leaving behind our joyous, bracing, fresh, breezy weather for the horrors of heat, sun and warm seas lapping against the shore. Their equipment is for sale and so we went out to Hexham last night to snap up the press and extractor. All we need now is a honey crop this year, something that was sadly lacking in summer-free 2012.

Awaiting the weekend weather

For the first time in weeks I heard on the weather forecast today a positive comment about a possible break in the winter weather. It won't happen until the weekend but possibly, hopefully, the wintry weather will end on Saturday or Sunday. It can't come soon enough. Our greenhouse is filling rapidly with seedlings that need to be planted out. Over the weekend, we planted into seed trays the onion sets and garlic that we would have preferred to plant straight into the ground. Sharp night time frosts means nothing is being planted out at the moment. We simply have to get as much ready as possible in the greenhouse for planting once the warmer spring weather arrives.

The positive point about the weather over the past couple of weeks however is that it has been relatively dry.

This morning's duck eggs

These were the three eggs from the ducks this morning. As you can see, one of them is exceptionally small and has a very fragile shell. We have experienced this once before, though it was with the hens. It can be caused by a calcium shortage. I put grit which includes calcium into their food. Perhaps I am not including enough. I'll keep an eye on things and if the problem repeats itself, I'll increase the grit, poultry spice and egg shell I add to the feed.

Digging the drainage system

I have mentioned before that we need to dig some drainage channels on our allotment. The ground here has a thick, heavy clay layer and we are at the bottom of a gentle slope, next to the outflow of a culverted stream. This means that other allotments on the site drain into ours. In addition, we lost crops last year because of the intensive rain and waterlogged soil. Hopefully there will be no repeat of that level of rainfall but we are not relying on hope to ensure our crops grow. So we have started digging the drainage system.



To create the first channel, I dug down through the top soil until I hit the clay. In most places this meant digging down only 30cm. A couple of places had deeper top soil. The channel was about 20cm wide and it now runs from the south side of the allotment to the north side where it will drain into the culvert. Into this channel will go a drainage pipe with notches cut into it through which the water from the ground will seep. Over the pipe will go stones, brick and rubble we can collect around the allotment site. Our original plan was to fill the channel with gravel we would buy from the local DIY centre but we decided that would be an unnecessary expense when there are plenty of stones and bricks littering the site which are begging to be put to good use. Once filled in, we'll put some paving stones on top to create a path.



Two other channels will be dug. One will start under the duck house and go to the pond. This area is the wettest part of the allotment. The second will run from the other side of the pond to the far corner of the allotment where we will dig a second pond. This will be for the ducks to use and we will close off the first pond to them. The ducks wrecked that pond within a couple of weeks of getting them. It was meant to be a wildlife pond. It had been full of newts and frogs and we want them to return to the allotment as they are good for eating bugs, especially in the nearby polytunnel and greenhouse.

We won't finish this construction job until the end of April but work so far has progressed well. We will also dig a channel into the neighbouring allotment so they can drain their land, which also floods in part, into our drainage system.

From incubation to brooding - how to hatch hen eggs

This is the video we made of the process of getting the fertile hen eggs, putting them in the incubator, looking after them, hatching them and then transferring them to the brooder. We'll be doing updates over the coming months.

Hatching egg - the video

This video shows one of the chicks hatching last week. I have speeded it up significantly. The actual time it took to hatch was nearly 40 minutes. In this video, it is reduced to just over 2 minutes.