I had a long and much needed lie in this morning. The first nights sleep in a week when I havent’ been sleeping on a floor or awake coughing for most of the night! I woke to the sounds of happy and noisy children so knew long before I made it downstairs that they were both feeling better too :).
The two eggs that were mid-hatch when I went to bed last night were still in the same state and the 6 chicks already in the brooder were all doing okay but 2 had badly splayed legs. One of them I’d already noticed soon after it hatched yesterday . Their legs should sit nicely below their bodies but when they splay one or both side out to the side and don’t take their weight properly when they walk. There are degrees of it and there seems to be debate as to what causes it but among other issues it was one of the problems Spatchcock had. One of the chicks seemed otherwise completely fine and the other although a bit feeble doesn’t have anything else obvious wrong with it. They would both of course be culled in most instances for this but I remembered having read something about splayed legs so checked up on it and decided to try and do something about it after looking online.
We’ve always said we won’t ever take the chickens to the vets – they are not pets and we won’t treat them as such but I am learning loads about poultry keeping and if nothing else it was a good way of learning more. I’ll blog about it in depth on Self Suffish.
My Mum rang and I said we’d go over there for lunch and planned on walking over. I thought the fresh air and exercise would do me and the children good and I could either get one of my parents to run me back to collect my car to go back for D and S or wait for Ady to pick us up on his way home from work so wouldn’t need to walk back with them. It’s only just over a mile and easily walkable in under 30 minutes but involves either walking along the main A27 or walking through the village which has a couple of areas with no pavement so isn’t ideal for walking.
We got dressed and left and spent some time on the grass verge outside as I told the children I’d been watching two foxes playing on there last night. They are out there most nights around 1am and if they are noisy, as they were last night, I am often alerted to them being there and watch them playing. Aside from the threat to our chickens I actually really like foxes, I think they are beautiful animals. Scarlett found a clump of fur she thought might be rabbit and Davies found some pollen that had been shaken off a flower when they jumped into our neighbours garden. Scarlett then found half an eggshell (blackbird I think) which was from a hatched chick but we couldn’t find the other half or any more of the shell.
Mum had walked to meet us about a third of the way from her house so we walked back with her. Scarlett was pointing out butterflies, beetles and flowers to her, quite a few of which Tarly knew the names of and my Mum didn’t. Someone said to me the other day ‘your children are really into nature’ which wasn’t something I’d particularly thought about them but I guess is true. It’s funny how my kids are having the childhood I read about in books and hankered after but never actually had myself.
Mum and I double-backed to the supermarket having left the children with my Dad and Frazer to get various bits for lunch. It was classic my family round there today. Frazer had had his car towed home from the town centre by my Dad yesterday after he’d broken down, left it parked on double yellow lines and got a parking ticket. They’d not been able to get the car started so Dad called the AA out. The AA man came, plugged the car into his fancy laptop to try and get a reading of what was wrong and it came up saying nothing was. Infact that was correct – using a high tech process of elimination he worked out that all that was actually wrong with it was that it had run out of petrol! Now I play petrol chicken fairly regularly myself so I won’t judge too much but that is very Frazer!
Mum was on one of her ‘my life is shit’ kicks wanting to moan about everything around her but not prepared to listen to any advice or solutions. Sometimes I think she quite enjoys wallowing in her own misery…
Dad was in one of his antagonistic moods, wanted to argue with me about why Home Educators should consider the ‘HE could be used as a cover for abuse’ in any way offensive ‘well it might!’ and totally didn’t get the welfare and education as seperate issues thing. At least he does these things with an element of self awareness and the knowledge that he is winding me up and that is partly why he says things.
The kids enjoyed being with Frazer while I sat and chatted with my parents in the kitchen. Dad tried to get me involved in one of their arguments but I said my years of mediating in their marital issues had long since passed which had them both looking slightly shamefaced. I lost track of the number of times Mum said to me today ‘well it’s alright for you, Ady does…x, y, z’
Ady, who as we have long since established is wonderful, finished work slightly earlier than normal which was good as the children were both more than ready to go home, and came to meet us there. He stayed for coffee and then we came home.
Ady and the kids spent time in the garden, I spent time performing medical procedures on chicks, cooked the kids’ tea and then had a bath before sorting out our dinner.
I don’t think I could honestly say any of us are 100% back to full health but I think we’re all on the right side of getting better at least.