Turkey & The Changeling update

I am snatching a couple of minutes to complete a fowl update..(if anyone is interested?) Chris is working away in Newquay later, so is pottering around and getting in my usual mornings routine way! Mind you he has just made me a bacon filled bagel, so I can live with the interruptions.

The turkey poults are just starting to develop those long necks of the adults and are looking so irresistible. I always make sure I spend some time handling and playing with the babies and I know they now recognise me when the shed door is opened, as they crane their necks and "peep" for England

The changeling is in fact a Leghorn cross (centre pic) and she has set up home in the buff house yesterday. Pirrie the bantam cockerel who oversees the buffs seems to be quite chuffed with a new member of his flock, the old hen is a wise old bird and so far I had witnessed no overt bullying. She is underfed and rather thin but shovels corn down her crop with a sickening gusto.....sigh...another useless beak to feed me thinks.........

I have called her Charlotte Vale.....(my friend Jonney H will understand why)

Changelings

As usual Nigel Posts interesting comments.....this time about changelings- a subject I know nothing about...
I found the information about Welsh changelings fascinating:-

"In Wales the changeling child (plentyn cael (sing.), plant cael (pl.)) initially resembles the human it substitutes, but gradually grows uglier in appearance and behaviour: ill-featured, malformed, ill-tempered, given to screaming and biting. It may be of less than usual intelligence, but again is identified by its more than childlike wisdom and cunning.
The common means employed to identify a changeling is to cook a family meal in an eggshell. The child will exclaim, "I have seen the acorn before the oak, but I never saw the likes of this," and vanish, only to be replaced by the original human child. Alternatively, or following this identification, it is supposedly necessary to mistreat the child by placing it in a hot oven, by holding it in a shovel over a hot fire, or by bathing it in a solution of foxglove."

New Girl

Yesterday I noticed that there was a white sussex in the churchyard. Nothing new in that fact, but it was BEFORE I let the hens out of their houses. Having a hen that does not go into her coop at night is rare, and usually a sign she has been sitting on eggs under a bush or in an old hedge, so last night I checked if all the whites had roosted on their perches and all had!
This morning, there she was again, sat on the Churchyard wall quite calmly and this time I carefully counted all of my white hens as they darted from the poop doors......all correct!
Hummmm.......so when dropped the feed out I gave her the once over....
yep....I wasn't too surprised to find that I have another dumped hen to look after. The new girl looks a little old but is healthy and bright eyed. Of course she is too shy to be caught, so I cannot check her for lice and ticks, but at least she is a hen and not another cockerel!
I left her some corn and she shared it with the benign Susan, before coming down to wander unnoticed amongst the buffs and ducks. I forgot to photograph her this morning
I will make her (and Susan) some pasta before I go to work today-I am a soddin late shift to help with staff sickness.......
Nearly 1000 hits from the US readers!.....oh the excitement! thanks people.....

PRISCILLA

Night in the warm and a good dvd...........
bliss....
one of the funniest scenes in film.....

Responsibility

I think it is so sad that the coroner and Jury in the inquest case of the suicide of Fiona Pilkington and the killing of her daughter Francecca Hardwick, concentrated their fury on what the police and council didn't do to prevent the yob abuse of these two vulnerable women.
Over seven years, teenage bullies from Pilkinton's housing estate sporadically harassed and intimidated mother and daughter in their own home, until Fiona could take no more and she set fire to her car with herself and her daughter trapped inside it.
By concentrating on the authority's role in this matter, the Jury has neatly sidestepped all of our own responsibilities in this and thousands of other cases just like it.
Communities often remain fractured and isolated when faced with the lawless underclass; fear produces if not an apathy , a paralysed inability to act in the "right" way.
What would these teenage thugs have done if, when on one of their sorties to the Pilkington house, the whole street had banded together and had stood shoulder to shoulder at their gate posts? Perhaps the whole story would have been so very different then again perhaps not...
As one, the usual "silent majority" needs to hold fast against these families that have no respect for others; we need to realise that it is not just the responsibility of the police to face and sort these behaviours , but is something we all should be dealing with, face to face.....and despite of all the terrible fear and anxieties provoked.......

Testosterone

I have got all macho this afternoon and have started the huge job of repairing the Church wall. As Gorden Brown droned on with his platitude filled party speech, I separated face stones from scree and laid everything out in readiness for the next job of clearing out the backfill!

The hen flock gathered around to pick over the debris, and all the hard work has kept out the chill of the day!

Autumn has finally come home to roost, and the shortening days and cooler temperatures has had its effect on egg production which has reduced drastically....only 7 eggs today.....just enough to keep one neighbour and the baby turkeys (who love a daily scrambled egg) happy
By four pm, I felt sore and stiff, so I gave the dogs a long walk and came home to bake a carrot cake.................

Well there is only so much macho work one guy can fit into one day isn't there?

Someone in your corner

Tonight's blog is more of a life observation rather than the usual banal listing of daily occurrences at home and on field.
This morning I finished work at 8am, it was cold and dull and 13 hours in the company of some people who I have absolutely Nothing in common with had been a bit of a chore.
Couple this with the fact I was tired, grumpy and out of sorts.....the whole day was getting off to a very bad start.
When I got onto the old Berlingo, I did allow myself a small smile... for there on the dashboard was an odd looking blue tack dog.
Chris had fashioned it yesterday as a silly gift when I was lugging large bags of corn feed into the car from the feed wholesalers and without thinking I had plonked it down onto the dashboard before we shot up to my brother's.
This morning this daft little figure provided me with a small but important little boost....it simply said "There is someone standing in your corner!!!"

My Brother and his wife live in a converted Welsh farmhouse out in the sticks, and after an abortive attempt at viewing antiques for sale at a local auction house, we packed the dogs in the car and went out for a visit,
As we sat on the patio with tea and cake, the dogs ran riot in their garden, and as usual one (Meg) went flying into the pond. (which I would have filled before now with a score of runner ducks)

We would have stayed longer but as I will be working this evening I had to drag chris away from Andrew's phone games (below) so I could have a brief sleep!