I think more of us anticipated the arrival of 2021 than in any other year I can remember. Annus horribilis- a horrible year. Hope this one is an annus mirabilis-‘wonderful year’. Vaccines frantically being rolled out in the wealthier western countries. If they can’t vaccinate someone who already has the disease then they are going to find it hard to get on top of this contagion. It’s was year in which you couldn’t really plan ahead, especially for travel. ‘Hunkered down’ being the preferred mode of existence until case numbers dropped then it was like a weight being lifted from your chest until the next wave when it started all over again. I am extremely grateful we got to celebrate Christmas, despite thinking we needed a mini lockdown. New Year was a quiet affair in this household. Even more grateful my Mum got to see this new year and is responding to cancer treatment.
Weather: A permanent cloud seems to have formed over the Southern Highlands in the last few weeks. Rain nearly every afternoon but definitely overcast and temperatures very low for this time of year. We had the last two days before Christmas Eve with the wood heater going. Hey, not to complain or anything but usually when I have to mow the grass, I’m not also building up the heater. Haven’t been for a swim this season or to the beach- am hoping before the end of the holidays to get there. The vegie garden has really shot ahead. Bush pumpkin plants are a metre high so are the potato plants. Tomato plants are raging upwards and beetroots and silver beet planted a few weeks ago have started to progress. The shallot bed has been crazily successful, but I let it go to seed in the hope of seed spreading as well as having lots of bulbs to plant next season. Am progressing slowly with digging daffodil bulbs- can’t find too many of the little gems because-doh!- I forgot to mark the rows with stakes. The paddock they are in is not massive- about 30 or 40metres square but the grass on it is so thick our goat is working hard to reduce it so I can dig. I have hired a guy to slash the main paddock- which is about 2 acres in size. It looks amazingly huge when its slashed. At the moment thick bracken and high grass is covering it and allowing the ‘Tree of Heaven’ to creep across. If I haven’t mentioned this tree before, it’s a declared weed in the shire and regarded as a bio-hazard and the council is forcing me to poison it. I have done an hour trial on this so far, so let’s see.
Animals: The co-sitters- a white Muscovy duck and a brown hen have 3 and 6 ducklings respectively to raise and are currently in small cages until their babies are big enough to transfer to a larger cage. The grey Muscovy duck hatched out five ducklings after all the fuss and after not knowing if the thunderstorms had killed them. Of the 14 ducklings hatched this year, most are Moscovies but some show characteristics of Pekin/Khaki Campbell cross- one has a blue beak for example and there are a few brown ones. The black hen and white Muscovy duck in the turkey house have hatched nothing. This is more an issue of the eggs not being fertilized, I believe than being killed by thunderstorms. However, hatching rates are down this year. The grey duck has hatched 16 ducklings in a setting in the past.
The grey Araucana hen in the back pen hatched out one tiny black and white chicken and then left her eggs so I put these in the incubator. I hatched out one black chick and this chick went to the brown hen in the turkey side pen who had sat for weeks with nothing to show for her trouble. This can only work if you put the chick under the hen at night when she is still on eggs and she will think she has hatched the chick. Hens don’t accept chicks you just put with them in daylight- they are not completely stupid. However, they can’t count, so you can put more chicks under a hen at night than eggs- presumably dud ones- she is sitting on. This hen is still sitting on the dud eggs in the cage and not attending to her chick’s food and water needs so today I will have to remove them. What’s the point of one chick you might ask? Well, I’m not after numbers. I just want this hen off her broodiness and one chick will do it. When it gets bigger, I will put her and her chick in with other chickens I hatched earlier to make a group.
Groups stick together in later life and perch together at night. When you introduce new hens to a group they will be picked on and the ‘pecking order’ worked out. That’s why you shouldn’t introduce just one new hen to a group if you can help it. Introduce at least two or more if you can. Then they have a minor group to hang out with until the main group tolerates them. I have found singular hens don’t seem to settle in one pen easily, they migrate from pen to pen and seem a bit lost. The same thing has happened to my black duck. She stands out amongst the white crowd of ducks in the pen she is usually in and too seems a bit lost. Hopefully, more black ducks this season will help her blend in more.
‘Birds of a feather stick together’ is generally true. The Pekin and Pekin cross Khaki Campbell group- 6 of them- lone range across the road for succulent snails in the roadside verge and in the vacant house block. If I hear a car horn it’s usually someone beeping them as they cross the road. I chase them back in a lot.
Au revoir, mes amies, bonne annee!
amundr 