Cardinal Nichols, Cardiff City, Reds V the Blues

In a week when Mr Fox snacked on our chickens, we needed something to lift our spirits.

How nice then to see Cardinal Nichols with a Cardiff City shirt.

Such a shame that he chose the red version and not the Marian blue (with yellow and white Vatican trim), so beloved of many popes.

I know he got a red hat, but to empathise with Cardiff fans perhaps he should have chosen a blue hat?

A blue hat for blue times...

Still, as St Thomas More - friend of Cardinal St John Fisher - said, no one gets to heaven on a feather bed. That's a sentiment Cardiff fans can associate with!

What a week! Birthday, Driving, Proms (oh and a Dead Chicken)

Going grey - me and George! (there the similarity ends)

This week we've had or will have:

• one child's (16th) birthday.
• one child started his driving lessons (second one today).
• one child's prom for leaving junior school.
• one child's prom for leaving high school (as Head Boy).
• one child's participation in a school music concert.
• and (just into next week) a Grade Three violin exam.

On top of all the other usual chaos of family life (and preparing a first VAT return! yikes!)

And we lost one chicken at the end of last week to a fox (tunnelled into the run, broke off the 'egg basket' lid - now nailed down). It was one of the speckledys...

It's been quite a busy time! if I have a few more grey hairs than before, well, no surprise.

And the baby goldfish in the pond are getting bigger - about an inch and a quarter long and now more grey than black.

Our Speckledys: And Calling on the Charity of a Celeb

Yes! Speckledys. According to the eggsperts (groan!) the Speckledy "is a modern hybrid and comes from a Rhode Island Red crossed with a Maran."

Our three Speckledys (Speckledies?) are variously coloured - one has a darkish mostly black head, one is half black and half grey, and one is mostly grey (like the various ages of Old Pa Hurley). I must get some pics of them for you.

So now you know all the new hens we have: Belgian Black Bantams, Silkies and Speckeldeys. They all seem to live together, sleep together and play hopscotch together very well. OK, I made that last bit up, but you know what I mean.

They're not all laying yet, but we are getting eggs most days from the Silkies and Belgians. As with our last ex-battery Warrens, these new chickens are ideal for clearing most scraps from the table (they love spaghetti, old chips, bits of bread, pie crusts, rice, peas, cake and virtually anything else left over).

Our peas are steadily growing up the natural wood wigwam I made for them and this year's spuds are just coming through in the space I dug over for them next to the compost heap.

As we do more in the garden I think it would have been marvellous if we had a smallholding. We would love to have pigs, goats, ducks and more besides, but in an ex-council house with limited space there's only so much we can do... oh well, c'est la vie. I suppose until we win the lottery we'll just have to keep dreaming ;-)

Watching West Ham v Blackpool in the play-off final, it's much the same. Keep on dreaming.... that one day... maybe... 

Mrs H always says, whenever some celeb is in the news for taking drugs, why on earth they don't just use their money to get a little farm and stop being silly. I guess some do - they just don't make the headlines.

So hey if you are a celeb (we all know the celebs, utility bosses and dotcom rich look in here from time to time), bored, wondering what to do to break that boredom, how about buying us a farm? You could pop in whenever you like for tea and biccies, and we could certainly bung eggs, milk, cheese and bacon your way gratis. All for less then some people pay out on cars that depreciate when driven off the forecourt.

So come on! Chad Hurley? Sir Phillip Green? Sir Tom Jones? Simon Cowell? Or maybe Prince Charles? We really don't mind! Anyone who would like to help us have an organic small family farm... I shall be waiting for the email!

And Our Second New Breed of Chicken is...

Ooooh the suspense!

We have a hen and cockerel: a pair of black Belgian Bantams!

And the good news is the hen has started to lay already.

They are two little critters and so the cockerel isn't too boisterous or aggressive, but does like to "sound off" from time to time.

Along with the pair of Silkie hens they have added a distinct sense of fun and the exotic to our run.

More news to follow on our last new breed of hens...

And some sad news too. Our last of the ex-battery Warren Hens looks like it will be dead within 24 hours. It's a little over 4 years since we got our four ex-batteries and they did us proud, giving us an egg a day each for circa three years, then they gradually stopped and died off over the last year or so.

Funnily enough when we put the new hens in last weekend the ex-battery Old Hen was feisty enough to put on a bit of a fight, to exert her seniority. And now she's almost lifeless and at life's end. C'est la vie. Literally.

Oh - and by the way, for those interested, we have three baby goldfish in the pond. One seems to gradually be getting a little lighter, the others are still black.

I was down there the other day and I thought I could hear a frog croaking. Could one of our tadpoles from last year be returning? It's an exciting time in the garden at Hurley Towers...

And Our First New Breed is... the Silkie!

It all went a bit 1940s yesterday. We woke to more water coming in (dripping on Mr. Polite's school uniform!), and minus a (working) washing machine!

I am wearing a black armband now in memory of the money I had to part with. Whoever said 'parting is such sweet sorrow' is an idiot. It's not sweet at all. I didn't even have time to get to know many of those twenty pound notes!

But here we are, roof patched up by yours truly (until it is replaced - next week we hope) and with a new washing machine (six loads yesterday alone says Mrs H!).

So onto more pleasant things...

CHICKEN NEWS

Here's a pic of one of the new breeds of chicken we got last Saturday. We got a pair of Silkies. And they are laying (their small) eggs already.

They are cute as anything, have a gorgeous and weird little sound (like a coo rather than a cluck), can't fly and so are more than welcome in our little run (after the headache of chasing our ex-batteries around the neighbours' gardens when we first got them!

All the new chooks have settled in well now, the Old Hen (last of our ex-batteries) has stopped bullying the newbies, and they are all going in the coop at night and cuddling up together.

More news on our other breeds soon...

Tense and exciting isn't it?

Better than the X Factor and others of the genre. Mind you, stubbing your big toe or eating cold custard is better than watching the preening, wailing wannabe-celebs.

Chickens, Cardiff City, Storm, Holes in Roof and Olympics SAM Defence Systems - Just Another Weekend

Well it's been quite a weekend.

• We finally got some new chickens on Saturday. Unable to get ex-battery hens as last time, we got a selection of breeds at a livestock market, which was a weird mix of salt of the earth farmers, inbreds, middle class welly-wearers, scary men in hunting gear - and us. More news on that (and photo's) soon.
• Cardiff won against Crystal Palace on Saturday so now they're through to the play-offs and with lessened expectations than in the previous two years of play-offs experience, it's not so much a case of "we will win" as it is one of "every stage is a bonus." So it's West Ham as the first team to beat... Bluebirds versus the Hammers. 
• On Sunday the storms hit and on returning from Mass we discovered two small(ish) holes in our roof (and two of our neighbours were similarly afflicted). With more heavy rain forecast for tonight/tomorrow it looks like we'll all need snorkels.
• Poor Dad Hurley (yep, me!) was up in the loft in the cavity betwixt the plasterboard and the brick wall, pushing temporary materials into the holes just to stop the bulk of the water coming in. Lots of dirt, cobwebs and dripping water later... job done. For now.
• Our poor chooks were very bedraggled on only their second day at Hurley Towers. They must have been wondering what they let themselves in for. That plus our last existing ex-battery hen -- the Big Momma of the run -- is bullying a bit, especially when it comes to settling down for the night, getting to the food scraps etc.
• Today we had eggs from the smallest of our new breeds (more info soon!) which is good going. Due to the stress of moving, even the ex-batteries took almost a week to start laying when we first got them (three years ago I think), so just a couple of days with a big bullying mother hen, mixed in with three other chicken breeds (yes, four in total), our newbies are doing pretty well.
• Today we didn't hear from the MoD or the govt about the surface to air missile (SAM) battery to defend the Olympic sites and its placement on our roof. I'm sure this is an oversight, and just so they know for the price of a new roof we'd be happy to oblige. If unsuitable for the SAM battery, perhaps a couple of soldiers could sit up their with binoculars looking out for Al Qaeda baddies? We're easy either way.

Comin' atcha!

And if one of the missiles accidentally goes off and lands on the West Ham training ground, giving the scattering players sprained ankles and a valuable life-lesson in the depredations of football players in Afghanistan and other war-torn regions, well... no real harm done.

Anyhow, life goes on... Patch is snoozing on the settee and breaking wind. Yes, he's quite the social commentator.

Good Friday and Our Chicken(s)

It's Good Friday.

I suppose it's sad to look around and see that today is regarded by most of our countrymen as 'just another day.'

If it weren't for the likes of Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell, we too might have huge processions involving whole towns leading to the Church, carrying the Cross, statues and banners, full of colour, beauty and emotion, like our cousins on the Continent.

Oh well.

For those who have followed the news of our chickens (rumour has it is closely followed in the Kremlin), the third one has now died. We now have just one old bird (no jokes about a female member of the family) left in our run and she's no longer laying eggs... We really will have to get some new chooks very soon.

Somehow the death of one of our old chums and planning new chicks seems to fit in with Easter... death and resurrection.

Hannah the Chicken: Mortua Est

Hannah the Chicken in happier times 5th Jan 2010

Sad news this week, one of our chickens - Hannah - passed away on Thursday night.

For about a week she had been noticeably weak and in the last couple of days we had been helping her to eat, simply making sure she had her fair share of corn, pellets and left-overs, and helping her in and out of the coop.

We knew she was on death's doorstep on Thursday as she could barely move, so we got a cardboard box, filed it with hay and placed her comfortably in it. We then placed the box in the coop so she benefited from the warmth of her compatriots overnight.

Come Friday morning and Hannah was dead.

And so there were three, still healthy, still laying eggs.

We bought our ex-battery hens on Shakespeare's Birthday/St George's Day (23rd April) 2009 and back then we were told (by a chap who was buying some at the same time, who had bought them before) to expect "a couple of years laying" from them.

The weird thing was that a couple of weeks back Hannah seemed in fine fettle and wouldn't have been the prime candidate to pop her clogs first.

There was no outward sign of disease, no sneezing or coughing, no loss of feathers, she just gradually seemed to lose strength until she died.

Black armbands aren't compulsory of course - but may be worn at family functions for a few months.

Hannah pullum mortuus vivat pulli.

Want Chickens? Get Chickens! You'll Love Chickens

It Was St George's Day 2009. Shakespeare's Birthday.

We toddled off to a local battery chicken egg producer and bought 4 ex-battery hens.

They cost us £1.50 each. Some were a little the worse for wear. They were certainly 'past their best' as far as the egg factory were concerned.

Left: Some of our chickens.

With the chickens safely 'boxed up' in the boot of our car we headed off (glad to get away from the stench of the place where so many chickens were crammed into little cages) to give our four hens a taste of freedom.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well at a quite recent family wedding, I was chatting to a relative I'd never met before and he was saying how he and his wife were thinking of getting chickens.

'Think no more!' was my instruction and I regaled him of what a wonderful thing it was to keep chickens, a labour of love, requiring little real work and delivering a wonderful bounty direct to the family.

You have the joy of having nature working in your own garden and of the wonderful taste of organic eggs for your breakfast, with your chips, as an omelette, in your cakes etc. etc.

At circa 4 eggs a day there is plenty to go around our family and we often give spare eggs to friends, family, neighbours and even our Parish Priest. And these eggs taste better than any you'll get at the local supermarket.

Aside from the initial cost of the coop, there is little cost involved bar the grain and layer pellets.

Here's my tips for anyone thinking of getting chooks:

• Cordon off a part of the garden for them. Even if just 6 by 6 foot - it's freedom compared to what they had. The more room you can give them the better, but the Rhode Island Reds we have just got everywhere when we at first gave them total freedom -- and they will get through hedges, over shortish walls etc. and they do get into flower beds and wreck them (though some breeds are better)
• Shop around for food. Own brand pellets from farm supplies outlets work out much cheaper. Same goes for treats like meal worms. Family Bargains shop sells tubs for £1.50, whereas Pets at Home sell bags (probably twice as large) for circa £15! They are the same and the chooks love the cheap ones as much as the expensive ones.
• Shop around for shavings and hay too. If you have the storage it does work out cheaper to buy big bales/bundles from a farm supplier or similar. If storage is a problem you can buy small amounts more often.
• If one chook gets picked on at the start don't worry too much, they settle down after a week or so. Same goes for non-layers.
• If you do let the chooks wander hither and thither and they seem to 'stop laying' -- they haven't. They will have a 'secret nest' somewhere (we had one in a hedge and one behind a shed, both very difficult to find and empty).
• Feed the birds with scraps and any leftovers you won't be re-using. Why give all that goodness to the rubbish men when your chooks can get sustenance? Ours love cold chips, noodles, bread crusts and much else! What they don't eat gets trodden in, pooped on, then gets forked over into our adjacent compost heap.
• Yes - keep a compost heap nearby, the chicken poop and wee'd on shavings/hay from the coop can go straight on the compost heap and will do wonders for your garden a year down the line.
• On cleaning we find emptying out the coop and putting in fresh shavings/hay once a week suffices. When you choose your coop go for one with a slide-out bottom. Makes it easier to clean. Once a week goes well for raking the earth around it and/or forking out the waste/poop etc. for the compost.
• The only pest we've seen is red mite. Just buy a suitable treatment and spray the inside of the coop once or twice in the Summer. Look out for mites in the joints, hinges etc. The spray can blow about so a DIY face mask is handy.

It may all sound very complicated but believe me it isn't!

The hardest bit is getting the right coop, closing off an area (we sank in posts and used (ahem) chicken wire with a wooden gate), in short the preparation.

So my message to anyone - relative or otherwise - thinking of getting chickens is: go for it!

They are a joy to watch, they are funny little characters (from the bossy one to the naughty one) and if you have children, getting them to (help) clean out and gather eggs is an education all in itself.