So yeah we got a few more chickens the other day. One of them was a hen from Calderglen Country park that kept jumping out of its enclosure so they wanted to rehome her and the others were 3 Scots Grey hens and a cockerel. Unfortunately the cockerel didn’t go down to well with the neighbours or my sleep as you can imagine. With still being ill I’m not getting a good sleep anyway but to wake up every morning at 5am to the cockerel telling everyone in the neighborhood it was morning puts the icing on the cake.

We tried to rehome it at short notice but like most people looking to offload a cockerel we had no chance. So at 10pm on Monday night after trying to completely blackout the cockerels coop we decided that if that didn’t keep him quite to a reasonable hour that was it. So we went to sleep.

At 5.30am I woke up to the chickens morning call. By 6am I’d grabbed it mid crow and dispatched it. Its an awfully weird experience sitting on your back door step watching the sun come as you pluck a chicken. Especially when you live in a town as large as the one we live in! It was round about now that I realised that we never got any photos of Glen, as that was what we named him, before his run in with the broom handle. I’ll stick a LJ-cut style thing in here I think to spare those that may be squeamish from the pics.

Continue Reading →

Jeff over at Buzzmyblog.com has just game us a prize of a one month ad on his site for being the Weekly Buzz winner this week!

WisdomBeginsInWonder.com is a blog run by a proud parent who writes about great stuff for kids on the Internet. With a 3 kids, a dog, 3 cats, and a couple of chickens, Bob is upfront about not being able to grow his blog into a huge media sensation. But with categories like Books, Science, Parenting, & Toys, Bob has truly built a great place on the net for parents and kids alike. I really like Bob’s philosophy on embracing the Internet WITH kids instead of shielding it from them. I think its a great way to teach kids from an early age how to be responsible and cautious online. Bob takes great joy in teaching his kids by letting his inner geek shine through.

Thank you Jeff

It’s quite well known amongst my workmates and friends that we keep chickens. It’s even reached our kids nursery.

photo credit: aliwest44

I’m not sure who’s idea it was but my wife managed to source an incubator and 10 eggs for the toddlers to hatch. The nursery got right into the swing of things and the daily activities involved things to do with the eggs and how to look after the chicks when they hatched. Everything was going great and I think they were prepared for the odd one or two eggs that didn’t hatch and maybe a couple of chicks that wouldn’t make it past a day or two before passing away. What they were not prepared for was precisely what happened though. Not one single egg hatched. Something happened at the 4-5 day mark which caused the eggs to stop developing. It could have been a powercut or any number of things but until the day they were due to hatch we didn’t know how bad it was going to be.

We were gutted when only 5 of our 14 eggs hatched the first time we tried it so I can only imagine how a group of toddlers might feel when none of them hatched. We managed to lend them our Indian Runner Ducks that had hatched a few days before so they got their fix of small fluffy animals eventually but I can’t help feeling the kids lost out by not seeing their eggs hatch. It’s been great watching our kids get used to the chickens and the ducks. I’ve always been worried that Nairn would hurt them but he’s always so gentle when he’s handling them. Fair enough he still chases them about when they are in the garden and has been known to throw a kick at them and never make contact but he’s learning so much. Not just about the chickens but about life in general from seeing these wee fluff balls grow up.