Well over the last week i have been outwitted by both a chicken and a pig!

The missing chicken is alive and well. She tends to appear when i go to feed the ponies and comes to hoover up the bits they drop. Thing is we never see where she comes from! I've tried hanging around to see where she goes back too but she refuses to go until your not looking, she scoots off the second your attention is distracted by something else! So i still have no idea where she's sitting or how many eggs she has!

As for the pigs well what a learning curve this week has been! It started at the beginning of the week with a large swelling appearing in the groin of one of our 3 boars. I was baffled as to what it could be and could only guess at hernia because of its location. A few days later we actually rather unpleasantly discovered that it is in fact an abscess caused by a wound on his buttock. The wound is tiny, it looks like a puncture wound but i can't find anything in the pen that could have caused it so i am suspecting a bite or sting that has got infected. We had help to drain it aw much as we can and the swelling has reduced a lot but there is still a hard lump a bit smaller than a tennis ball and he is still limping. He is on antibiotics but there lies our problem! The AB's are via intramuscular injection. Just how do you persuade a boar to stand still for that?? The answer is i have no idea! He totally outwitted us last night and we had to admit defeat! We have a few different tricks up our sleeve to try later so i shall report back on how we manage it...and we WILL manage it today!

Oh and i failed to keep my hands down at the meeting last week and am now secretary to the Village Hall Committee!!

There are 24 legbar eggs loaded in my incubator due to hatch 8th July :) The current chicks are feathering up well and really need to get out on the grass a bit now. They are off heat altogether as of last night and will be 4 weeks on Thursday.

Right we are going camping next week so i'd best go and start writing the 'instruction manuals' to leave with the various neighbours looking after the different wildlife for us! Oh how i love my lists!!!