I've seen our first limping drake today on the last day of March, Joseph. What impressed me most about his handicap is how much he strived to stay in touch with the rest of them, no matter how often the group moved. Being together with their family group seems to be more important to them than anything else. Poor Joseph didn't get much chance to lie down as he did here in these photos:
Shortly after taking this photo I did a little video of him limping along with them, poor chap, hope you can see how hard he is trying to keep up in spite of the pain. John thinks the accident happened yesterday. When he was in the lower greenhouse the whole mob came charging uphill all of a sudden, in a great panic, and a few of them crashed right into the glass. What caused the blind panic he couldn't see, but it is likely that Joseph sustained his injury then - didn't notice any limping yesterday, though.
In the garden it's not only the Forsythias that have "exploded" into blossom, several cherry and plum trees are well on their way, too. We can just hope that a late frost doesn't rob us of fruit again like it did last year - "summer" is said to be over now and winter is due back according to the forecasts.
Unfortunately, exactly where the support wall for the conservatory will be built up because its gable should coincide with the gable of the garage, stood our very large peach tree, it had to come out, but it's flowering! John and I together managed to curtail the root system, dig it out and transplant it to the edge of the ditch. That was yesterday. We took as much care of it as we could, gave it excellent support and lots of water - that yellow tub in the picture contains the next load of water - and thankfully the blossom was still there today. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the tree will survive.
It's the end of March, I totted up the eggs we've had so far this year from our lovely ducks. The four young ones have been fantastic. I think I mentioned that we had the first 2 eggs from them at the end of December, and it carried on in January. We didn't get an egg every day, but from 27.1. we found 2 in the shed making a total of 18 in January. The first two weeks in February we had very cold weather and no eggs, it started again on Valentine's Day. On 19.2. we had 3 eggs for the first time and on 21.2. all four ducks had laid. Since then they gave us four eggs every single day without a break, thank you Gertie, Billie-Jean, Praline and Bless for 202 eggs so far this year! What has also been very pleasing these last 3 days when we found just 3 eggs in the nest box in the morning, we saw Gertie going back into the hut later and producing her egg in the beautifully hollowed out bedding in the box.
The four ducks in the bottom hut cannot match that kind of productivity, they are much older. I have a suspicion that Candida [whom we fetched from a sort of rescue centre and don't know how old she is] hasn't laid at all. There was one egg in that box on the last 3 days in February, and recently, since 18.3., we've had 3 eggs most days. Altogether 46 eggs from Anke, Lane and Hedda .......... unless I've been doing Candida an injustice and it's Hedda who hasn't laid because of her damaged leg ...........
Duck pie then according to chicken run !!! X ;)
ReplyDeleteBit late in my answer, but YES!, it was mentioned ...."don't you go doctoring him up now, one drake less" , that sort of thing. Chicken Run was mentioned, too, when I'd separated the 5 boys and terrified them into hiding - I was Mrs Tweedy then and John was 'kind' Mr Tweedy because they weren't frightened of him!
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