Buffy RIP

Sad week this week. Buffy went to the vet yesterday and we took the decision to let her go. She was so thin and couldn't stand. It has all started a week or so ago, when I noticed that she remained seated with her legs under her when I went in to give them treats, collect the eggs and generally check everything and. play with them. Normally Buffy would be crowding around with the others, waiting for me to give her her treats in her favourite place, on the edge of a particular piece of wood. I did sometimes hand feed her but she was so vigorous at pecking that mostly I wouldn't last very long.

The others were normal, Lucia has now decided that when I crouch to fill up the footballs with treats, her place is next to the treat bowl pecking corn as I scoop it out. Funny how. their little brains remember routines. Cordelia always heads straight for the perching tree where there is a doughnut shaped bowl that I fill with maize and Porche sometimes eats corn with buffy, sometimes with Lucia and sometimes with Cordelia.

But Buffy wasn't herself. I didn't want to spook her so I walked slowly over and offered her treats in my hand. She seemed fine and walked over and gently pecked a few times. I should have spotted that this wasn't normal and picked her up to check.

Same happened the next day, last Wednesday, but I still wasn't worried. I thought she'd just developed a new routine.

Thursday I was due to drive down to Cornwall and  Buffy seemed to be having difficulties standing and was rolling over to her right and splaying her left wing. The others were starting to peck her which is a sure sign that there was something amiss.

I got Ant to assemble the hospital eglu as I had to leave, and put Buffy in it.

Over the weekend while I was away, he checked her daily. Tried to get her to eat sweetcorn (she wouldn't) so she was clearly not a well chicken.

I arrived home on Monday and gave her a thorough check. She wasn't egg bound, and her crop was empty. She was painfully thin. Chickens are very adept at concealing deteriorating health. I immediately phoned Scotts Vets - they specialise in exotics including chickens, and was able to get an appointment with a lovely and very good vet, Megan. I then gave Buffy some chicken tonic and used a syringe to drop a few mm of water to try to stop her dehydrating.

The vet was very good. She loves parrots and it was very clear that she was experienced with birds.

After a full examination, nothing obvious showed itself so the other other possibilities were cancer or something neurological. Yes we could leave her with them to stabilise and try to find out what it was, but after spending 3 weeks nursing Willow to ultimately have her die anyway, we felt it was kinder to have Buffy put gently to sleep. Megan the vet agreed and so we left sans Buffy.

Two chicken deaths in a week - Lulu and then Mapp

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. 

RIP Willow

 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

Broody Buffy, broody Cordelia, poorly Willow

My three new chickens settled in well after the early scare with Cordelia. Thank goodness for Nutridrops, now renamed Poultry Power by Nettex.  Took a few days, but she eventually recovered. I initially put them in with my five existing girls, but the booted sabelpoots bullied Cordelia mercilessly - sometimes you could not see her for three teeny chickens on her back pulling her feathers out - so I moved the three of them into the green eglu with the tunnel run on the other side of the garden. 

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.

Her comb etc is still nice and red, and she does walk, but prefers to just sit around. I had her out on my lap today and was able to tempt her with a little sweetcorn so am hoping that the Poultry Power drops are doing the trick. I've locked all three out of the eglu to encourage them to eat and drink. Buffy and Cordelia may have done so, but within a very short time, the three of them sit in an unhappy chickeny pile by the shut door of the eglu waiting for me to let them in again. 

And of course - no eggs!

Sadly, also, the inevitable came to pass and Velvet died on 10th July. She had been going downhill for about 3 weeks, unable to hop up onto a wooden sleeper, so I knew the end was coming. I didn't have many photos of her so made sure to take a few, and she died 3 days later, so I'm pleased I did.

It is proposed that anyone able to do so should ignore government restrictions from now on

Enough's enough?

After days of propaganda and doom-laden warnings from Sage scientists - some of whom have openly stated they want to keep masks and other social restrictions forever - it seems we are set for an extension to the restrictions: ..more

It is proposed that anyone able to do so should ignore government restrictions from now on

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. 

The Government's campaign of fear continues

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. 

However, if you use the actual number of covid inpatients, rather than the percentage, the graph looks like this:

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.

I have just listened, over lunch, to the BBC 1 O'clock news. That was a mistake. The spent a good 5 minutes interviewing Margaret Keenan, the 90 year old who was the first woman outside of a trial to receive a vaccine, and the nurse who gave it to her. Surely there must be some actual news to cover? This was clearly a propaganda exercise, but why now. What are the nudge unit trying to achieve? Next there was a piece on long covid, with two people who had been working to recover over the past year, and lots of shots of them in hospital, heart rending stories of their struggles to breath etc. Shortly afterwards, there was a screen full of pictures of young children and yet another 5 minute piece on children who are suffering with long covid. There is plenty of news out there that could be featured, but instead we are fed a diet of gloom and doom, presumably softening us up for some new announcement of delay to the restoration of our human rights. The recently released book "A State of Fear" by Laura Dodson is insightful about the abusive methods used by our own government on us. The techniques are so obvious - yet they still seem to work with the vast majority of the population. My opinion of the intellectual ability of vast majority of the population has, I'm afraid, plummeted.

Sold Eglu Cube on Ebay

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.