Well, maybe I am being a little optimistic! But I have seen the daffidols starting to push their way up...well a few have been pushed up my moles admittedly, we seem to have colony of moles at the moment. Funny to watch Remy (one of the cats) frenetically trying to dig them out...then traipsing his muddy black paws inside the house!!!!

The bantam faverolles have started to lay, but won't  be looking to hatch  just yet. I think we will be hatching banties largely under broodies this year as normally late spring I usually rather a lot of them, although irony dictates that the hens I want to breed from will be the broody ones!!!!

This year, I am hoping for blue, black, splash and salmon in the bantams, will be working on blue salmon as well.

The large, well I have finally sorted breeding pens out. Won't be popping any in the incubator for at least 3 or 4 weeks, not too worried as long as they get most of spring summer to grow and at least they will go straight out on fresh grass which helps. I have been surprised by the size of our late   summer hatched faverolles from last year, they have come on really well. Have some particulary good pulllets bred last year that I will pop into the breeding pen, will be very interested to see how the chicks come out. I will be using Bigfoot largely, he is still such a handsome boy and hasn't lost any of his rich cherry mahogony colouring. He does take a while to get going though, very much a fair weather boy, but so gentlemanly. He doesn't mind me popping in and checking on his run, enjoys wandering aroound chatting to me....I am not complacent though, one of his sons accidently flew into his run,and got a serious scalping from his dad!!

Other not so good news, the fox has paid a visit, and although all our runs are electrified, one of my beautiful Muscovies had flown out, easy pickings for the cunning fox. This tragedy coincided with flooding afer the snow melted which unfortunately shorted our perimeter fencing. This rather scuppered our plans for visiting the Scottish National as we had our work cut out making repairs.

What a start to the year!

I do enjoy the snow, and , mostly it has been  lovely. The farm and surrounding area is set within a valley, so the snow looks beautiful,and with the wood as a back drop gives it quite an alpine feel. I guess the challenge has been trying to keep the birds and ducks happy with plenty of fresh water, which with the outside tap freezing over has meant traipsing inside with buckets. As quickly as the trugs have been filled it seems Mr Frost has frozen them over again! The birds don't appear to have suffered, a few have started laying, a bit sporadically but nonetheless poached eggs are back on the menu!

Talking about eggs, we have managed to source a supplier of 12v timers - ideal for attaching to a 12v battery and this has meant we have been able to add a bit light to the end shed which is some distance from the house. Mark Huddart has been fantastic, sorted out all the equipment, cables etc as well as loads of advice. I will pop a link on my website as I think others will find his timers really handy. I can now use light in any of my sheds to give my breeding birds a little extra help!

Breeding, I really need to get myself sorted! The large faverolles benefit from hatching early. They need the long halycon summer months to develop, and can take up to 13months even longer to reach their true potential. This is also true for the show bench, as type and size equate to 40 points nearly half of the total points attributable, so you can see why hatching early has its benefits as well as hatching from decent sized hens eggs. All very well, but someone please tell my old dears that! My lovely breeding cock doesn't really believe in treading until the sun warms his back, but when he eventually gets going his fertility is high. Only problem is by the time the big show come round, everyone leaves me green with envy with their lovely big, pullets and cockerels whilst I am left with long legged scaggy growers!!! Never mind.....I was pleasantly surprised when popping a wandering pullet from last year back into the right run, how big she was, hatched late July she really has grown well despite the short winter days. Took her photo before I put her back, so she is now on the gallery!

I think tonight I will sort my breeding large salmon into his run with 2 of his girls, hopefully they will lay soon, am very excited about this breeding season. Will be looking at hatching the bantams a bit later on.

As I type it must be minus 3 here just outside Bristol, and we had a surprise dump of snow last night. Great. Looks lovely, butc ouldn't get out of the driveway this morning! Doesn't look like things are going to improve much for tommorrow. The birds being faverolles are incredibly hardy, and handy having your own ready made scarf and muffling to keep cosy. Not too keen on snow though, one of the boys pranced out this morning and flew straight up on to the nursery shed roof and looked miserably down muttering gloomily to himself!

Dspite the awful weather the birds are looking good, the late hatch of large faverolles (July) seemed to have grown overnight, still won't be at their best until the Spring, and will be a bit young to use for breeding. Still nice birds and surprising heavy, will be interesting to watch them fully mature in the spring.

The bantams have done me proud. Took 3 little poppets to the Federation in Stafford this week-end, and  all  3 won cards, despite 2 of them being my reserve birds. The classes were huge, so really pleased with them, particulary as they really needed a few more weeks to get them at their best. Miss Placed laid her first egg at the show, much to her embarrassment, bless her heart

The judges as usual at the show were really helpful, plus some of the long-standing members of the British Faverolles Society eager to share tips and give advice. A truly friendly breeds club, not that I am biased at all!!

My ducks, sigh...the runners delight in making mud,glorious mud so when the big pond iced over I couldn't help but chortle at their attempts to skate across, very miffed that the water had disappeared! Talking of ducks, all my attempts to reduce numbers have failed as I have somehow ended up with 3 delightful Muscovies, not everyone's favourite admittedly, with their strange carbuncled features and most un-ducklike hisses and chirrips!!!Interestly they haven't evolved from the Wild Mallard like all other domestic Waterfowl has. They  do seem to enjoy flying around a bit,never mind, it seems there is always something new to be scratching our heads at! Talking off new...again have ended up with a new trio of blue bantam salmon faverolles, I have been hankering after them for a while so a HUGE thank you to Simon Harvey, who has a habit of slipping me lovely birds when hubby is not looking. The trio are perfect, the boy is called Sly Stallone and of course will pop photos on the gallery.

The weather is still horrible, making life miserable for the chooks, the ducks are more that happy though!

Have had to bring one poorly looking faverolles bantam inside, not sure what is wrong yet, I am hoping she is just under the weather, a pretty little thing too but rather thin and miserable. Popped her into the nursery with some heat to see how she fares, fingers crossed it is just a little tlc she needs.

Our mains energiser is on the blink by the looks of things ,so have had to fork out on a nice new posh one that can power a lot more nets as well as cope with less than ideal conditions,it has loads of different functions as well, and has quite a bite!!! We have seen evidence that Mr Raynaud is back in town so now it is crucial not to overlook those maintenance jobs!

Roasted one of the surplus cockerels this weekend, fantastic meal so much better than  supermarket chicken! Surprisingly tender as well with lovely dark tasty leg meat,very nice. Never really like killing our birds but it is part of life when breeding that inevitably there will be surplus cockerels at least we know they have a wonderful and natural life free-ranging on fresh grass with the sun on their backs!

Show season is coming round again, with the two main shows of the year National and the Federation,being held in November and December respectively. I am not exhibiting at the National this year, but do have a few bantams entered into the Federation. Not sure if they are any good (OK I think they are gorgeous!) but it is always worth entering birds at shows, particulary where there are classes specific to the breed. Lots of very experienced people who are happy to give advice and the judges don't mind if you catch them after judging for a quick chat and critique of the birds!

Chooks aside, the new kitten Sammi, (short for Sambuca) is settling in well, full of mischief and learning her hunting skills by following Remy everywhere. Bless her she brought in a large bluebottle the other day, so proud, her tail high as she deposited her rather chewed fly at my feet! Delightful......

Well, this time last year if I remember it was freezing cold, dry and with bitter early morning frosts, saying that I much prefer that weather to this rain and galeforce winds. The ducks are loving it, making it quite an adventure trying to get in and out of the duck run without slipping in the mud!

This is a good time of year   for me to sit back and reflect what went well with this years breeding season   and to start sorting out likely candidates for next years. I am pleased with the large this year, one likely fella I am thinking of using next year, just wish I hadn't sold all the older pullets, will be waiting an age I expect for the youngsters to come into lay, and the dear old girls I have are heading towards semi-retirement. So all my plans to hatch early might well be thwarted!

I am dead chuffed with this years bantam faverolles, Danny De Vito has done himself proud by producing some lovely offspring, particulary special as some are from Fish, my dear old salmon bantam lady now in her fourth year. She is a madam with a habit of hiding clutches of eggs, and it takes quite a bit of sleuthing to discover them!      

     One of Dannys boys...

April is turning out to be quite a busy month! What with hatching lots of lovely faverolles chicks, spring renovations outside,sorting and disinfecting the henhouses, checking and reseeding all the runs and making sure that they are left fallow as appropiate so the growers when out on grass have lovely, fresh new grass to play on!!!

I must say though, the ladies in the breeding pens took their time to lay, but worth the wait as the chicks are lovely big and very healthy!

The ducks have decided that they dont want to go to bed, and would rather stay out late dabbling in their pond, so each night we play chase the ducks around the duckhouse before eventually herding them into bed. This time of the year I think they are burning the candle at both ends! The drakes are definately doing the business, although due to an unfortunate prolapse poor Zeus is somewhat less of a drake than he was before, poor lad, think he was rather overdoing it...............

Healthwise the birds are all looking smashing, and loving the gorgeous spring sunshine, I  love watching them lying wings splayed in complete bliss sunbathing, athough, one always catches me out and I end up running outside heart in mouth convinced they are dead, only to find out they are just sun-worshiping (dohhhhhh!!)

Danny Devito has settled in very well with his new ladies, I have found he is rather partial to cat-food and the minute I turn my back he will have led his ladies in through the back door and will have his beak in the catfood bowls, with the cats looking rather bemused but not however, wanting to risk a peck! (There again, Remy always looks a bit bemused...)

I noticed one of my lovely faverolles girls had lost a bit of weight, she looked well and healthy and seemed to be pecking normally. Looking at her crop became a little concerned, it felt hard and very much like something possibly was lodged in there. After a little massage however, I still wasn't happy so popped her down to the vet. The vet  agreed that the crop felt impacted and decided the surgical removal of the blockage was the best way forward. She made a vertical excision through the crop, (which doesn't contain nerve endings so no anesthetic was needed.) The crop was emptied, flushed sewn up, Filly was prescribed a course of anti-biotics and given a painkiller to make her feel more comfortable. When we got home we popped her in a dog-cage for the first 24 hours,a sort of intensive care, this allowed me to observe her, keep her wound clean and manage her diet -which was normal food with a little chopped egg mixed with a few oats. The advice from the vet was little and often so not to distend the crop and put pressure on her stitches. Filly is doing really well today so will move her out into a large broody house to give her more room, and get her out of the kitchen, the cats are getting a bit fed up of her eating their food! Hopefully she will continue to improve.

Well it has been an interesting month so far! The heavy snow meant we had a little more to do in the mornings -defrosting drinkers, filling up the ducks pond after digging out the ice brrrrrr... To cap it all we  then had a bit of a flood once it all melted, never mind today  really felt like spring is in the air!

The breeding pens are all up together, will be hatching bantam salmon and blue faverolles this spring,and,of course large salmons. The hens have all just started laying so will leave it a bit longer to let them get into full swing. Bigfoot has been decidedly slow in treading but I think thats because he knows when his girls are ready, such a gentleman.  

We have a new additon to the flock a rather handsome salmon faverolles bantam cockerel we have named Danny Devito, the name does suit his rather cheeky charm! Rather hoping that our bantam faverolles "Fish" will take a liking to him -we would love to have chicks from her!

The ducks are as daft as ever, we have moved them to their mid winter run as their previous one got rather flooded! Not that they minded I think they were in their element and loving the mud. They have decided to go on strike on the egg front though despite all my efforts, we had even bought them a new pond to go with their lovely new run.....nope they are having none of this egg laying business! 

   This is a photo of one of my cochin hens braving the elements!

Well its been freezing! -3 for the last couple of nights and not much less during the day. Challenging to keep drinking water from freezing. I have resorted to keeping a little drinker inside the big shed and emptying the plastic drinkers to pevent them splitting from the ice,although have lost one already,darn!

Whilst we have been of work we having been getting to grips with a few repairs, Marcus put a new floor in Bigfoots house and popped in a new perch. We lifted all the houses to check underneath for the presence of rodents, all looks OK apart from one suspicious hole, not sure if its a mouse hole, better be on the safe side, trap down and baiting stations to top up.

Hens all healthy although Sally one of last years' breeding hens is on a course of antbiotics -she was a little chesty so better to be on the safe side. Brought her in for a night to observe, she is much better that reminds me must bring her in for her meds, as a little piece of bread as a treat!

The runners dont seem to mind the cold, as long as they have fresh water to puddle they are fine - they did look a bit odd today,caught them standing on one leg with head tucked under one wing....seem to be catching too!

 Have put a couple of boys in with the ducks and given them a bigger 3X4 shed, one of the boys (Mr Chestnut) very unimpressed with the new house has decided to sleep in another henhouse -he might get a shock when he gets up-there are a few other boys in there too, note to self: get up early and rescue him!!!!