Gecko

 During the winter these guys disapear, only to appear once again when the spring comes and warms things up. They appear just about everywhere, even indoors! They’re sort of like pets, useful ones that take care of the insects and other creepy-crawleys that might find themselves in the house.

Their tail is special because when they are caught by a predator they can shed their tail, so occasionally you see one without a tail, or sometimes there is a tail without a gecko!

They range a lot in size, from a couple of centimetres to perhaps 20cm, from the ones I’ve seen, and if you really look for them you’re sure to find one hidden somewhere. They’re true little companions and a pleasure to have around.

Growing chicks and incubating eggs

Here is a picture of the chicks at 22 days. They really grow fast!

"22 day old chicks"

But there’s plenty more days in the year to have more chicks. So we stored up some Empordanesa eggs and waited until we had a broody hen. And that broody hen turned out to be Pinky (because she has pink toe tips on the end of her black feet). She was hatched June last year, so this is her first brood. Not only that but we put 13 eggs underneath her to incubate. That’s now reduced to 9 because not all of them got sufficient warmth. Last Tuesday we lamped them to see if any of them had developed anything, and I’m happy to say that all 9 had a “shadow” in them. Next Tues we’ll check again, to see how many of them have really developed. And the Tues after that they should be hatching.

Pinky and her eggs.

Working with Stones

If there’s something we don’t lack in this valley it’s stones! There is an old quarry above us and an active one nearby. Even the house we live in is mostly made from local material! So anything we want to create with stones we can do it. Here, for instance, Mika made a flower bed. You can see the before (antes) and after (después) of her work.

Shortly afterwards I started working on another thing that I’ve been meaning to do for months, which was repair a collapsed wall that was supporting some steps that I use daily to get to the chicken coop. Thankfully it didn’t fall and I could go down it quite well, but I didn’t want to test my luck for too long. I did some dry stone walling, like it had been before, and filled in the gaps with soil. It’s repaired for the moment but it’s one of those things that I will have to keep an eye on. Here’s a picture of the before and after too.

We’ve also been working on an outdoor oven in the courtyard, which I shall write a blog about in the near future. In the mean time if you want to have a look you can see a few blogs done on Biosfera 2030 under the name horno.

All hatched!

Yesterday morning I found the first egg hatched, which was Fluffy (black chick on the left), then just before lunch I found that another egg had hatched. This was another black one (the adventurous one up on the feed), a big fluffy thing we called Yogi (Bear). Then later we went in the afternoon and found a third one hatched. This time it was the Empordanesa chick (pale yellow with no markings) which we have called Mimosa (after the plant, and in Spanish that word translates as “soppy” too). The fourth one had started to pip through the shell already but we didn’t see it until this morning and it turned out to be Apricot (yellow one with dark markings on back and head).

Since the chicks didn’t hatch all at once I know which chick came from which egg. Like I said before, Fluffy came from Kidjo (an Easter Egger) but I’m not sure which cockerel it comes from. Yogi “smarter than your average chick” Chick came from a hen called Ginger and the black cockerel, Raven. Mimosa comes from our Empordanesas, Hercules (Poirot) and Christie (the other hen is called Agatha). Apricot came from Eowyn (another Easter Egger) and it’s colouring tells me it’s sire is probably Tetley (the Easter Egger cockerel).

It’s still a delicate time. Once the first week is over we’re mostly in the clear. But so far they all seem healthy and I don’t see any obvious reason why they shouldn’t all survive. Still, fingers crossed!

Breaking News

"Fluffy" (on the back of the head there is a light fluffy patch, very distinctive)

(no pun intended… originally)

A chick has hatched!

I was expecting that tomorrow the eggs would hatch. Usually the day before an expected hatching I can pick up an egg and hear the cheeping or pipping. Today I tried the same but heard a very clear “cheep!” that told me that at least one was out of its egg. I felt in the nest, underneath underneath the hen and took it out.

I’ve identified its dame as Kidjo; one of the Easter Eggers (see black hen at the end of article). She was hatched last year and this is the first chick from her.

The chick has one distinctive identifying feature, a little patch of fluff on its head that you can see on its head. We’ve tentatively called it Fluffy (it’s difficult to give anything a name at such a delicate stage of life). When you have a nest of eggs with a mix it can be very difficult to identify which chick came from which egg. But I got there in time to see which egg it came from.

More updates in the next couple of days on the progress of the others three.

Lamping Eggs

Next Saturday we may expect our chicken eggs to hatch. It takes about 21 days for an egg to incubate. Every seven days (from day of setting the eggs that’s days 7 and 14) I check the eggs for development by placing a bright light underneath and egg. The Saturday before last I saw some “shadowy” effects but wasn’t sure if they were all developing, sometimes the yolk is a bit messed up inside (I have no idea why). If it is clear I take them away because then I know they are NOT developing. You can do that with your own eggs from the supermarket, make sure you are in a dark room, then put a torch underneath it (better through a hole in a cardboard or “ring” your thumb and fingers) and then you’ll see how clear it is. If there were to be any shadow (don’t worry, shop eggs normally don’t, shouldn’t anyway) then there’s the possibility of something developing.

The Saturday just gone I checked them again, putting the light under where the air sac is. To my delight I found that all of the eggs are dark with only the air sac visible! Like in the picture. At this stage that means that something is definitely developing inside all four of the eggs.

It’s still a delicate stage. Sometimes they develop but don’t hatch properly. And when they do hatch sometimes they don’t live for very long. Usually once the first week has past we’re over the worst. Fingers crossed! Reports will continue.

Getting Ready for Chicks

Hazel inspecting her new nest and eggs

In different years we’ve created different ways to rear chicks. It’s been a bit hit and miss at times but each year we’ve perfected our methods. Last year we had bails of hay for walls and a board on top to cover it up. It worked fairly well, except the rats loved it and also it got a bit small when the chicks got a bit big.

This year we have built a box, and this should be more permanent than anything else that we have done. We will work with it this year and see how it goes. We’ve put two bricks in one corner filled with straw to keep the eggs in one place whilst they’re incubating. Once the chicks have hatch the bricks can be removed and they then have the run of the whole box!

Tonight I shall put four eggs I have been saving up from four different hens and in twenty one days we should be getting chicks! Updates will follow.

Easter Eggs

It’s a bit early to be talking about easter eggs, except when they come from Easter Eggers. Easter Eggers are any breed of chicken that lay blue or green eggs. They have a gene that means they produce slightly different eggs. “Easter egger” breeds include Araucana, Ameraucana and Cream Legbar, all of which lay blue or green eggs. My Easter Eggers may resemble one of these breeds in some way or another but they are definately not pure bred! And most Easter Eggers are so-called “mutts”. All Easter Eggers, whether breed or not, have a pea comb, which, want of a better description, is like a “blob” where the comb should be. Another characteristic that some share, like Twig and Eowyn, is that they have no wattles under their chin. Tetley and Kidjo both have wattles but they are fairly reduced compared to others.

The three eggs above come from three different hens, all related. The one in the middle comes from Twig, the oldest hen in the flock. She’s now coming up to five years old. Her eggs are fading in colour, looking a bit grey when they were once blue, but they’re still very good quality! She’s a very good mother but since she’s so old I’m reluctant to let her set any eggs now and let the younger hens do it instead.

Next we have Tetley who was hatched from one of Twig’s eggs in 2008. He’s grown into a very beautiful cockerel. In the picture you can see him with a cockerel he sired we called “Blizzard” that is now in another flock.  Tetley is the dominant male of the flock, having superceded his sire, Bamboo (not an Easter Egger).

In 2009, the same year Blizzard was born, Eowyn was also hatched. She was sired by Tetley too. Her egg is the green egg on the right. I’ve been told that they’ll produce eggs like this if they have one half of their genes with a beige or brown eggs. Last year she raised here first batch of chicks, although she didn’t stay with them for as long as other hens have. In fact her dame doesn’t go broody at all, so we’re lucky that Eowyn does.

 

Last year Kidjo hatched from one of Twig’s eggs. Her sire is Raven who I suspect to have some Ancona in him (their feathers are black with a white “V”, a bit like Blizzards if you look closely) and possibly some speckled Sussex. As you can see the variety of feather colours is quite something within just one family. But they all lay Easter Egger eggs and have the pea comb and it’s interesting to see how the family develops. Maybe there’ll be more this year!

Coppicing

Coppicing was one of my favourite activities in college. As part of conservation I was taught that this was a traditional method of managing the land.

The product you’d get would be long straight hazel wood to use in things like hedgelaying, wattle hurdles and wattle and daub houses. This also had an effect on the ecosystem. In a woodland there would be several areas that would be coppiced in different years, which meant each year there was material to use and for the ecosystem there would be hazel at different stages of growth, which would attract a variety of wildlife. Here humans were well integrated into the ecosystem, we were a part of the ecosystem. Then these traditional ways were left for new technologies and new lifestyles. The wildlife, the plants and animals, that had been delicately balanced around the human activity unravelled. Nature will adapt around this but, for me, this leaves humanity a bit impoverished.

There are plenty of hazel here in Spain, and we have a few terraces full of them. In England the hazel coppices usually make up part of woodland whereas here you have whole fields dedicated to hazel cultivation, so there is often very little else growing. I think also they don’t do coppicing here, probably because they have no use for the products that come from it. Usually during the winter you see little bonfires amongst the hazel burning what has probably been pruned. That is something I’ll have to research more on though.

Right now the hazel are growing their catkins ready to spread some pollen. And probably if you look carefully at some of the buds you’ll see a tiny flower. Then by August there will be hazelnuts for us, if the wild boar don’t get there first!

Ill Hen, First Egg

Last week I opened the door to the chicken coop and counted all the birds flying out to get their share of the compost. I got to sixteen. That’s weird, there should be seventeen, did I miscount? They run by at such speed together that it’s easy to get it wrong.

I looked in and saw one of our hens not looking so good. The youngest hen, hatched last year in June, was standing there looking lethargic. I separated her to make sure she was ok. When I got back I told Mika. Maybe it’s the cold weather? she said, since it has been very cold lately. Do you think we should take her in? And so we did.

Mika went out and I sat at the computer with a hen on my lap, warming her up. After a while she perked up a lot although she still wasn’t that great. Mika came back a while later to find me and the hen near the fire. She was walking around wondering where she was and she even stood near the fireplace, warming herself up. After a while she found a place to sit down, on my body-warmer on a settee like a little nest. She just looked like she was warming up more, then she stood up to get more comfortable and that was when I noticed it; an egg bulging out of her cloaca! It just dropped and there it was, an egg!

It started to make sense, with the extra cold AND trying to create her first egg that must have been an strain on her body! The egg’s shell came out soft, one sign of a new or old egg-layer. We boiled it, mashed it and gave it back to her to eat to get a bit of her own energy back.

We tried to reintroduce her back to the flock that day but she was still a little lethargic and probably in shock. And she wouldn’t move when a dominant hen started pecking at her. We kept her in a cage inside the house so that she wouldn’t get too cold and the next day she was better enough to return to the flock.

We’re breathing a sigh of relief and Pinky is doing well. Going back to what she does best, steel bits of compost out of other hens beaks!