Monday 22nd May 2017
A new wife for Grape!
At last we have a new wife for Grape! This is Apple and she has come from a very good friend who needed to downsize her number of ducks. There are three more to come: another Lavender (for this is what she is), a black and white (same as Banana who ‘ran away’ and Pear – currently on eggs) and a beautiful brown and white Muscovy/Runner cross. They will hopefully be joining us in a week or two once our friend has ‘sorted’ out her male ducks and there is no danger of males outnumbering her remaining females. Ducks can be rather ‘amorous’ when it comes to mating and females can get quite badly hurt if there are too many males ‘clamouring’ to get attention!!
Talking of which, a very happy Drake - if he had been human, his eyes would have lit up – consummated the marriage very quickly and then sauntered off to Napoleon in order to show off about it!!! As for Apple, she quietly wandered around her new home, pecking grass, drinking, eating the corn I gave her and at bedtime she could be seen tucked up in the corner of the stable, good as gold!!!
In other 'good' news, Queenie's eggs are pipping at last and we have at least one Maran hatched with two of the Exchequer eggs pipping!!! Very exciting. We also decided today that we needed to totally remove our wayward Indian Game broody from the stables. She is still being a pain and trying to get into other birds’ nest boxes and scrapping adults are not great when there are emerging chicks under one of them. She is now in our ‘hospital’ wing with her own eggs, should she wish to sit on them!!! We perhaps should have done this earlier as it now seems very likely that she has been at the heart of all the disruption, and we have certainly lost a fair few eggs to her.
Bizarrely it now looks as though ALL the remaining Indian Game eggs have died before hatching – we are not sure why as the last four we had looked fine when we last candled them. Big shame!!
Thyme is edging closer to giving birth, she is still not majorly happy but hopefully when her calf arrives, her hormones will take a different, but positive turn!!! She was a little mucusy today – a good sign although not necessarily one that suggests tomorrow/the next day is a definite. Cows (and many other mammals too) have a mucus plug that protects the unborn calf by not allowing any infection in through the cervix. This plug starts to dissolve a few weeks before birth and stringy mucus strands will then be seen. We recall seeing this in Parsley only just before she gave birth but Thyme may be different.
In other 'good' news, Queenie's eggs are pipping at last and we have at least one Maran hatched with two of the Exchequer eggs pipping!!! Very exciting. We also decided today that we needed to totally remove our wayward Indian Game broody from the stables. She is still being a pain and trying to get into other birds’ nest boxes and scrapping adults are not great when there are emerging chicks under one of them. She is now in our ‘hospital’ wing with her own eggs, should she wish to sit on them!!! We perhaps should have done this earlier as it now seems very likely that she has been at the heart of all the disruption, and we have certainly lost a fair few eggs to her.
Bizarrely it now looks as though ALL the remaining Indian Game eggs have died before hatching – we are not sure why as the last four we had looked fine when we last candled them. Big shame!!
Thyme is edging closer to giving birth, she is still not majorly happy but hopefully when her calf arrives, her hormones will take a different, but positive turn!!! She was a little mucusy today – a good sign although not necessarily one that suggests tomorrow/the next day is a definite. Cows (and many other mammals too) have a mucus plug that protects the unborn calf by not allowing any infection in through the cervix. This plug starts to dissolve a few weeks before birth and stringy mucus strands will then be seen. We recall seeing this in Parsley only just before she gave birth but Thyme may be different.