Our flu jabs are booked in next week. Today there is a big event here - our heating engineer is coming to service our elderly (13 years) boiler. He will be the first person over our doorstep since March. Tony is going to stay in the living room with the dog, and I shall be working in the front garde...

Three eggs again here today. I assumed that as the days are shortening quite rapidly they would be slowing down now. They have been such good layers all year and I think they deserve their rest now. They don't seem to agree. I would expect your one-year-old hybrids to lay through their second winte...

Thank goodness for Michael Rosen.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/ ... othingness

How old are they now Rick? My new pullets are now about 23 weeks. One is laying a small egg every day, one has been crouching for over a week but nothing yet, and the other two don’t seem to be making much progress. So I expect two of them should make it into proper lay before the days get too short...

Whilst recognising the humane value and the feelgood factor of taking on exbatts, it’s because this sort of thing can go wrong that we generally point out possible problems to people getting their first hens, if they ask for advice. Yes, many or most hybrids do eventually get to the stage where thei...

That looks much cleaner and more comfortable. I'd like to be able to see a close-up pic of her vent though, and another one from the side view where it looked like a possible prolapse yesterday. In this pic she appears to have an unusually long open, horizontal slit for her vent it looks strange. Al...

And another view ....
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... in-francis

Very much better, anyway. Let’s hope a second soak tomorrow will get it completely clean and disinfected, then it will be possible to see what is actually under there, and also what amount and kind of poo she’s doing. Poor girl. They must have been kept in shocking conditions at the farm. I expect s...

I bet this was a LOT more interesting than the online debate about pension funds! I was interested in the bit where it says "The legislator, from President Alberto Fernández’s Peronist party, at first pleaded to be suspended from his seat" What on earth was REALLY going on? https://www.theguardian.c...