They have lived to a good age - 8 years I think. No sign of any problems, then on 21st November, I find poor Lulu, my white bantam silkie, passed away. Then yesterday, 24th, Mapp a lemon booted Sabelpoot popped her little sabelpoot clogs.
I still have Lucia (lemon Booted sabelpoot), Porshe, (porcelain booted sabelpoot) and my two young bantam silkies Buffy and Cordelia.
It seems to me that my chickens last much longer when I cut down on the wet treats, and give them daily corn treats and maize.
After the previous post, I took Willow to the vet for the first time. We thought she had an impacted crop. The vet, Chris, was the only one who could operate and he juggled things around to make space on Friday. So I had to keep her going for four days...which I did with nutridrops and corn which she would still eat. He also asked for a poo sample which I collected and drove over the next day. Very expensive to analyse.
Friday came around and she was looking better and her crop had reduced in size. I'd also been dropping olive oil in her beak and massaging her crop. Another visit to Chris told me that her poo sample was clear. No parasites or other problems. I took her away from the vet again, this time with a 7 day course of antibiotics that I had to administer 3 times a day. That was a trial. I was trying to keep them evenly spaced. I had set up the bench in the shed as a little treatment room and would stand Willow on that as I crushed her tablet and mixed it was water to syringe it down her throat. I would go out late at night for the last dose, but she didn't seem to mind. By Friday she seemed a little better, she even seemed to eat some normal food.
Sadly she deteriorated again, so I took her to see another vet - by this time Chris had gone on holiday. I got a preparation that would speed up her gut in the hope that she would start processing food. By now she was so weak she kept falling over. I had her in the tunnel run, and she had fallen over so I had to crawl in on my front with a towel, put her on the towel, then reverse out dragging her on the towel.
Long story short, after much expense and three vet visits, we got to Sunday before Bank holiday monday and she went downhill fast. I determined to take her to the vet to be put to sleep the next day, but she died in her little hospital box in the shed overnight. RIP Willow 30-8-21
Within a very few days, Buffy became broody and has been broody ever since! This is going on for 3 months. Last week Cordelia joined her in broodyness, so poor Willow was outside on her own.
I noticed about 3 days ago that Willow was inside the eglu during the day with the other two, although she was not broody. I realised something was up and since yesterday have been treating her with Nutridrops. She has got very thin and has green runny poos - very green and runny and sticking to her feathers. I've not washed it off yet because I don't want to stress her, but she is definitely not herself.
And of course - no eggs!
The above question was posed on a discussion group that I am a member of.
My response to this question would vary depending upon when it was asked. When cases were increasing across the country, and hospital ICUs were filling up with COVID patients, I would be more inclined to disagree. However now (beginning of July) the situation is different. The SAGE advisers have been proven wrong yet again in their dire predictions based on models fed with inaccurate data. The reality is that COVID is accounting for something like 10 deaths per week, and some of those may well be from other causes but with COVID mentioned somewhere on the death certificate. Cases are going up, but with the level of testing the country is doing, this is hardly surprising. The tests were never designed to be used on symptom-less people so the accuracy of some of the results is questionable. On top of this, we have the Government minister, Matt Hancock, who, as secretary of state for health, has been very influential in imposing gruelling lockdowns on the masses whilst ignoring social distancing rules in order to have an affair with his aide. We have Michael Gove, another proponent of lockdowns in the inner government circle, returning from a trip and getting pinged by track and trace. Normal people have to isolate for 10 days, but if you are a member of Government, you can take part in a hastily devised 'pilot scheme' where you simply need to test yourself daily for a few days but provided you test negative, you can continue with your normal life. We have the leaders at the G7 summit posing for socially distanced official photos then ignoring the rules at the beach barbecue, and the thousands of UEFA VIPs and fans allowed to bypass quarantine rules so that the big matches could be run at Wembley.
Whilst the ruling elites are happily disregarding the rules they have put in place for the rest of us, they have extended the so-called 'freedom day' by 4 weeks. Four more weeks of young couples being obliged to limit their wedding guest list to 30 with no dancing allowed. Funerals suffer in the same way. Our children are being sent home from school en masse if one child in their 'bubble' tests positive, and that bubble in some schools is an entire year group. The latest figure I read was 375,000 children, mostly healthy and mostly at minimal risk from Covid, isolating at home with disruption not only to their schooling but also their mental health.
The contrast between the freedoms that the governing elites and their associates are allowed, and the restrictions on liberty that they continue to impose on the compliant population is increasing. The latest date for our 'release' is 19th July, but I struggle to believe that this too won't slip. Maybe we will be allowed some freedoms, but some constraints will stay in place.
That is not good enough. The vaccination program has proven its worth. The people need their civil liberties returned to them. We need to stop this two tier approach where the government impose restrictions that they clearly do not believe in and are happy to flout. If the only way is mass disobedience, then that is what we need to do.
I've forgotten how long we have been in this state. We lost Christmas, it got cancelled with about 5 days notice by the government. We have been in lockdown since January with a tortuously slow roadmap out that was supposed to end in Freedom Day today.
Not so.
Boris went on air last Monday, 19th June, to say that because the indian variant cases were growing, we had to delay until 19th July. There have been many Lockdown Sceptics pieces written about how the data were presented in such as way as to make it look worse than it is. For example, the following graph shows how a higher percentage of young people are being admitted to hospital now than during previous waves (because the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated). It makes it look like we have a crisis. What it does not mention is that young people recover faster and that admissions are balanced by people leaving hospital having recovered.
They are giving the impression that the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. In fact, there are many hospitals with not a single COVID inpatient. The following pi chart illustrates that there 99.2% of hospital beds do NOT contain COVID patients.
With my two flocks amalgamated, I've not used the Eglu Cube since about 2018 so it was just cluttering up the place. I decided to sell it on eBay. It was bought by a lovely lady called Hannah who came and collected it and erected it that same day. She was waiting for some ex-batts and yesterday emailed me today to say she had picked them up, and sent me photos of the new girls in my old Eglu Cube. It is so nice seeing it put to use again, especially for some rescues.
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| The girls upon arrival |
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| Cordelia in the outside run |
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| Spent most of the time sitting, tail-down |
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| All three hens pottering about |
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| The Walk-in Run |
I've arranged to collect them at 3pm tomorrow. This was the only collection slot available - fortunately it was the time I suggested. The roads are going to be full of people collecting chickens.
Today I spent the day in the garden getting one of my spare eglus ready for my new arrivals. My current girls reside in a nice walk-in run with perches, treat footballs and even an unused chicken swing. I plan to have the new girls (it will be fun choosing names for them) in the green eglu and tunnel run for about 2 weeks as they acclimatise and develop their own group pecking order. Then I shall introduce them to the existing flock. Usually I do this when they are all in bed asleep. I collect the new girls one by one and pop them in with the established flock. They will get bullied, but it should be fine. They will end up getting along well together. The current flock aren't huge bullies, though a fair amount of pecking goes on at treat time.
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| The green eglu ready for the new bantams |
I wanted to check how old the girls are, so took a look back at this blog. To my amazement, the two bantam silkies are 7 years old, and the three little booted sabelpoots are 6! They seem happy and healthy as anything. I don't really give them many wet treats, like sweetcorn, but they get a daily treat of corn which I sprinkle around so distract them so I can poop pick, then I fill their little football up and they kick that around a purple trug (to keep it clean and stop it getting buried in the aubiose bedding).
I was a teenager in the 70s. I remember so clearly the rubbish piled in the streets due to binmen’s strikes, playing monopoly for hours around the kitchen table in candle light with the gas over on and open to keep us warm during the interminable power cuts caused by untilities strikes. I have upon occasion tried to describe this to young ‘woke’ friends who felt that Corbynism was the answer to all the evils they saw in the country, from the majority daring to vote to leave Europe to a collective failure to accept critical race theory and the assumption that we are all racists whether we know it or not.
The below snippet was written by Janet Daley for the telegraph. It was discussing why 65% of voters supported the increases in taxation, (because we all know that debt run up by the Covid largesse will have to be paid off somehow), and cited the wholesale move of voters towards Thatcherism in the 1979 election. This expresses how I felt at the time. It was the first time in my life that I was old enough to vote, and I can still remember the cheering and delight in my Wolverhampton Polytechnic hall of residence as it became clear that the Thatcher had won.
Janet Daley article 8th March
No one who did not live through the 1970s can imagine the extraordinary, suffocating grip of the unions which controlled virtually all of the services essential to normal life – transport, gas and electricity supply (even the sale of household appliances), telecommunications and the press, plus local council provision of refuse collection, road maintenance and, of course, schooling.
Not to mention the major industries: car and steel production, and most notoriously coal mining. Any or all of these things that were necessary parts not just of the economy but of everyday existence, could be (and frequently were) shut down at a moment’s notice by union bosses who could call official or unofficial (“wildcat”) strikes without legal constraint.
Governments had been judged through the 1960s and 70s on how they managed to cope with this impossible dilemma: Edward Heath’s Industrial Relations Act collapsed in ignominious failure. Harold Wilson was elected to office on the promise that he could reach deals with the union bosses over “beer and sandwiches” at No 10. In other words, by agreeing to share power with them.
It was this desperation – the realisation that the country had become ungovernable – that drove voters to Thatcherism. They may have benefited from the tax cutting and deregulation in the medium and long term but it was not the principal appeal. The overwhelming mood of that moment – if you are too young to remember it, ask your parents – was rage and despair, and the sense that if the tyranny of the unions could not be broken, the country was finished.
I've not posted since summer 2020. Summer was quite nice. Six people could meet indoors, you could go to restaurants etc. The Nightingale hospitals remained unused and some were mothballed. There were warnings of an autumn wave but it didn't seem like any preparation happened. When students started at university, there was a wave of infections amongst students, and many were virtually imprisoned in their halls of residences. It was dreadful.
Matt Hancock coined the phrase to "kill your granny" to terrorise young people and school kids with the fear that they might have the virus and give it to their parents. A 4 tier system was introduced. To be honest, I've rather lost track of what was introduced when. Here we started off in tier 2, then suddenly there was an announcement of the UK Variant which was more contagious and arose in Kent. Borders were closed to the UK - France one of the first. But to no avail. The variant I suspect was already well travelled.
We approached Christmas. Boris had been promising us freedom on Christmas day, but as things deteriorated, and with only a few days notice, all the places (my own included) that were adjacent to the London and Kent areas where the new variant was rife were told they could not meet anybody for Xmas.
A bit of a blow as we'd been planning to have family over. A lot of driving to car parks and present swapping went on and we had a nice Xmas day on our own, but shared with my sister, her husband and my daughter and her boyfriend via zoom. Some people readily admitted that they were going to break the rules and carry on with their Christmas plans as arranged. I doubt it made much difference. It is really come to something in a supposedly democratic country where we are so grateful for such meagre crumbs of civil liberties as to whether or not we can associate with our families.
January arrives bringing with it a full lockdown! Together with laws saying you can only leave your home for specific reasons, buying food, exercising alone or with one other person, going to work, attending medical appointments or escaping danger. Exercise is supposed to take place locally - define local! Early on two women who had driven 5 miles to some open space in Derbyshire with a cup of tea each for a socially distanced walk were fined by the police because they said the tea counted as a picnic and that wasn't allowed. This caused a sensation and was subsequently reversed.
Meanwhile, the UK is leading the world, after Israel, in its vaccine rollout. First vaccine delivered on 8th December 2020. Cases plummeting in the over 80s (first vaccine group). But the roadmap out of lockdown announced by Boris Johnson seems not to take any account of this.
Step 1 is for schools go back on 8th March. Then nothing until 29th March when outdoor gatherings (including in private gardens) of either 6 people (the Rule of 6) or 2 households will also be allowed, making it easier for friends and families to meet outside.
Outdoor sports facilities such as tennis and basketball courts, and open-air swimming pools, will also be allowed to reopen, and people will be able to take part in formally organised outdoor sports.
The ‘stay at home’ rule will end on 29 March but many restrictions will remain in place. People should continue to work from home where they can and minimise the number of journeys they make where possible, avoiding travel at the busiest times and routes. Travel abroad will continue to be prohibited, other than for a small number of permitted reasons. Holidays abroad will not be allowed, given it will remain important to manage the risk of imported variants and protect the vaccination programme. The government has launched a new taskforce to review global travel which will report on 12 April.
Step 2, which will be no earlier than 12 April, will see the opening of non-essential retail; personal care premises such as hairdressers and nail salons; and public buildings, including libraries and community centres. Indoor leisure facilities such as gyms will also reopen (but only for use by people on their own or in household groups); as will most outdoor attractions and settings including outdoor hospitality venues, zoos, theme parks, and drive-in cinemas. Self-contained accommodation such as campsites and holiday lets, where indoor facilities are not shared with other households, can also reopen.
Hospitality venues will be allowed to serve people outdoors at Step 2 and there will be no need for customers to order a substantial meal with alcoholic drinks and no curfew, although customers must order, eat and drink while seated (‘table service’). Wider social contact rules will apply in all these settings to prevent indoor mixing between different households.
While funerals can continue with up to 30 mourners, the number of people able to attend weddings, receptions and commemorative events such as wakes will rise to 15.
Great - such government interference in the most intimate and important aspects of people lives! I never thought I'd see this. I really hope that the emergency legislation authorised last 23rd March gets repealed this march and that parliament can again have some sort of a say in the legislation. It currently feels like the country is being jerked this way and that on a whim, all the time building up massive debts and horrendous backlogs of undiagnosed cancer, strokes, heart attacks, postponed operations etc etc. Apparently, very high numbers of school children haven't seen a dentist in a year!
Step 3 - not before 17 May
As part of Step 3, no earlier than 17 May, the government will look to continue easing limits on seeing friends and family wherever possible, allowing people to decide on the appropriate level of risk for their circumstances.This means that most legal restrictions on meeting others outdoors will be lifted - although gatherings of over 30 people will remain illegal. Indoors, the Rule of 6 or 2 households will apply - we will keep under review whether it is safe to increase this.
As soon as possible and by no later than Step 3, we will also update the advice on social distancing between friends and family, including hugging. But until this point, people should continue to keep their distance from anyone not in their household or support bubble.
Most businesses in all but the highest risk sectors will be able to reopen. In all sectors, COVID-Secure guidance will remain in place and businesses may not cater for groups bigger than the legal limits. Indoor hospitality will reopen - and as in Step 2, venues will not have to serve a substantial meal with alcoholic drinks; nor will there be a curfew. Customers will, however, have to order, eat and drink while seated.
Other indoor locations to open up in Step 3 include indoor entertainment venues such as cinemas and children’s play areas; the rest of the accommodation sector, including hotels, hostels and B&Bs; and indoor adult group sports and exercise classes. The government will also allow some larger performances and sporting events in indoor venues with a capacity of 1,000 people or half-full (whichever is a lower number), and in outdoor venues with a capacity of 4,000 people or half-full (whichever is a lower number). In the largest outdoor seated venues, where crowds can be spread out, up to 10,000 people will be able to attend (or a quarter-full, whichever is lower).
Up to 30 people will be able to attend weddings, receptions and wakes, as well as funerals. This limit will also apply to other types of significant life events including bar mitzvahs and christenings.
By the time we get to May, hospital admissions will be negligible due to the vaccine rollout. Early indications are that it is effective at preventing people catching covid, ensuring that if they do get it it isn't very bad, and because they aren't ill, it is thought that it inhibits transmission. We were told back on March 23rd that we would have a lockdown of 3 weeks in order to avoid overwhelming the hospitals. These goalposts have been moved multiple times, with Rishi Sunak battling the mathematical modellers, and it now seems that the goal is no longer even on the playing field.
Step 4 - not before 21 June
Social contact By Step 4 which will take place no earlier than 21 June, the government hopes to be in a position to remove all legal limits on social contact.
Business, activities and events
The government 'hopes' to reopen remaining premises, including nightclubs, and ease the restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3. This will be subject to the results of a scientific Events Research Programme to test the outcome of certain pilot events through the spring and summer, where we will trial the use of testing and other techniques to cut the risk of infection. The same Events Research Programme will guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events.
Jeez!
Four more months. Four more months of increasing mental health issues, suicides, imprisonment of the elderly (which in the first case did not protect them, it merely ensured that they could be infected by their carers and staff rather than their family).
It feels like everything, all compassion, all humanity, all the achievements we have made over the past few civilised centuries are being sacrificed at the alter of covid. Even when all are vaccinated (by July) we are told that we will still have to wear masks and socially distance. Why? Few of us will be susceptible and the few that do catch it will not be too ill. There will be a few who still need hospital but that will be far fewer than the admissions (and deaths) from things we take for granted like flu and pneumonia.
We need to learn to live with this virus, and vaccinating points the way. But only if we allow it. The government has deliberately and knowingly terrorised the population to ensure compliance with a regime of totalitarian measures- supplemented by encouraging friends, family and neighbours to snitch on each other, causing distrust and breaking up communities. Who on earth thought this was a good idea...
