We are missing a hen. One of the ones with a tendancy for broodiness. I've searched all of the hedgerows and can't see her anywhere so i guess we have to wait 3 weeks and see whether she turns up with babies in tow. If not she will have been taken by a fox or a buzzard. Time will tell...

The chicks are almost 3 weeks old now and are off heat during the day. I decided to go with a 'chick led weaning' method on the heat and just watched them closely to see when they looked like they needed it back on. This started with an hour here and there and increased to a morning and afternoon block and then mid morning to early evening and now thay are going roughly 7-7 and i will probably increase that to 7-9 ish in the next couple of days.

They are growing well and getting lots of feathers. I must have changed my mind a hundred times about which are girls and which are boys! Again, time will tell!

The next lot of eggs have been ordered and should arrive any day. 24 Cream Legbars this time. I need to make a decision about what i will do with the males when they hatch. Researching the best methods of culling chicks isn't a fun prospect.

The pigs are also growing well and while they are still not huge they are now getting to a size where it's a little intimidating to be in a pen with 3 lively boars hoping for some food! They will be with us until August but i've been starting to give a bit of thought to what happens next. Ulitmately we hope to be able to breed on a very small scale but i think we will have another, larger batch of weaners before we even think about going down that route. I'd really like to have a few Oxford Sandy and Blacks next time, i think they are just lovely to look at and sound like they would be well suited to our set up. I think we will probably wait until next spring before we get the next batch now.

We are still waiting to sign for the extra land we are going to be renting which is holding everything up a bit at the moment. This had been going on since the beginning of May so we are really keen to get it all sorted now. The ponies desperately need the grass and we can get on with marking our the space for the pigs and fencing the new layers run for the chickens to move into.

I've had a bit of interest in the hatching for schools programme now called The Eggciting Eggs Hatching Programme! I have put a leaflet together to go out to schools and nurseries, it just needs a bit of tweaking as soon as i get chance.

I've got a village hall committee meeting this evening. Must resist the temptation to volunteer myself for anything else, i really don't have the time right now!

Must get the camera out and upload some of the recent photos and take some more.