SILO SNIPPET

..OR breaking news

 I am so EGGstatic, EGGcited and EGGlated - OK so that last one was stretching the point a bit, but I've just received news that 10 of my Scots Dumpys eggs have hatched in an incubator not far from my home in the Borders.
 Can't wait to go over and see the little 'uns and try and work out which hens are the mums and which cockerels are the dads! I will, of course, be more organised in future ... I took the term 'free range' too literally but at least they're all the same breed.
 Tonight the Scots Dumpys endangered species can rest a little more easy.
 Watch this space ..

NATURE OR NURTURE

.. Or should we give a helping hand?

OUTDOOR SUPER SCOUT: Davy
Crockett portrayed by Fess Parker

  HOT on the heels of his success of  finding a dead fox while out for a stroll, my city-based husband now thinks he's a cross between American frontier legend Davy Crockett and British super sleuth Sherlock Holmes. So when I threw him the latest countryside conundrum he went off into the great outdoors with an air of confidence bordering on smug.
 For more than a week now one of the turkeys goes AWOL within minutes of being let out in the morning. She feeds with the others and then wanders off, usually when I'm not looking, only to reappear several hours later after I've already convinced myself some harm has befallen her. My routine on a morning is to first open up the turkey house and place their feed a few yards away on the ground outside. By the time I go to the hen pen and release the Scots Dumpys the turkeys begin to wander into the yard towards their feed and usually peer disdainfully through the wire mesh as the hens scramble for their food. And it is in these few minutes that one of the Three Degrees seizes the moment and goes off on her mystery mission, it's as though she completely vanishes into thin air leaving behind staggs Ant & Dec, Little Boots and her two sisters.

VANISHING ACT: Five 
turkeys but where's the sixth?

 Twice now I've tried to follow her but as soon as she turns round the corner of the building and down a series of steps in the 12 seconds it takes to follow her she's gone. Her colouring as a Bourbon Red is very striking but once in woodland her feathers seem to blend perfectly into the background. I recounted all of this in detail to hubby and he vowed he'd find her, after all he found the fox didn't he? Two mornings running he failed to come up with anything but with each day he became more determined and then the Eureka! moment happened. And just as he stumbled across the dead fox this great find also happened by accident. He was working in a wooded area below the hen pen when he heard something stirring in a pile of branches, twigs and sticks he'd bundled some weeks earlier against a gable wall. Expecting to see a rat or squirrel, or something equally furry he watched and waited and to his amazement a furtive-looking turkey hen crawled through the bracken, almost limbo dancing between the branches, to emerge from her secret den. After she left, he poked around the pile of branches that you can see in the picture, below left. they're in the foreground wedged between to gable end-style supporting walls. His search was duly rewarded as he discovered no less than half a dozen eggs.

HIDE & SEEK: Can you spot the nest?

 Experiencing a mixture of excitement and irritation as he relayed the news to me I grabbed a bowl and we went off to the site to check out his story. Over the next 20 minutes we were at loggerheads over what to do. My instincts told me to collect the large speckled eggs and wait for the arrival of my incubator but he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is insisted that I let Nature take its course.
 On the one hand the turkey has shown a protective instinct, found a superb location to lay eggs and it is well sheltered if and when she is ready to sit on them. On the other hand, she's not a year old, this is her first batch of eggs and she has no experience of life as a mother; add to that she is used to sleeping inside a warm stable on an evening how will she cope with at least 25 nights under the stars? May be it's just luck that no predators have spotted her secret nest so far, but when she spends 24/7 for 25 days sitting on the nest she might not be as lucky.
 Hubby has gone back to London now,  and today I thought I would make a quick check of the nest. Here are a couple of pictures which will give you an idea of how well camouflaged she is to the human eye, but what about a fox?

SPOT THE BIRD: Can you see her?

GOTCHA: A clearer closer 
shot of the mum-to-be 

 As you can see from the picture left, she is very well hidden. I didn't see her but I stuck my camera phone into the bracken and clicked away not quite knowing what I was snapping and truth be told, I didn't realise she was in there at all because she remained completely silent throughout. I was merely trying to establish how many eggs she had laid and if they were still there so it took a while to spot her in this photograph, a bit like those babyscan pictures they show in hospitals to expectant mums, most of us sit there nodding enthusiastically too embarrassed to say we can't spot the baby. If you still can't see her check out the smaller picture above, on the right, which was taken from a slightly closer overhead angle. So what do you advise? Should I trust Nature or should I intervene, grab the eggs and incubate them in a controlled environment? Nature v Nurture - who wins?

WHO KILLED MR FOX?

.. Another mystery and a 'brush' with death

 LIVING in the countryside tends to bring out a very competitive streak between me and my other half when it comes to observing wildlife, and since I'm the one who spends most of my time in the wonderful Scottish Borders while he toils over a hot stove at his London restaurant, it is usually me who clocks up more observational firsts.
 I delight in calling him at 6.45am to say I've just spotted four deer crossing the lawn or later in the day telephone to say I'm watching two Peregrine falcons soar in the afternoon sun. Occasionally he'll get the odd text or email and sometimes photographic evidence of other delights I've seen as I bimble around the countryside.
 Most of my encounters are pleasant or gobsmackingly awesome although I do admit on meeting my first badger we both freaked out and turned in opposite directions running as though the Devil himself was snapping at our heels. I always imagined badgers to be cuddly, about the size of a rabbit but this one looked like a clinically obese Staffordshire Bull on growth hormone treatment.
 So I have to admit feeling some mild irritation and a touch of jealousy yesterday when hubby came hurtling into the house breathless urging me to come outside. In between gasps for oxygen he gabbled that he'd found a fox and that it was injured and possibly still alive.

DEAD OR ALIVE? Mr Fox

 I tried to adopt a singularly unimpressed expression as I slipped into my boots, sighed and followed him. However, I have to admit I was well impressed with his find as it was slightly off the beaten track and could not be seen unless you wandered into the edge of some woodland.
 Since no one was prepared to venture right up to the beast to check for signs of life, it was difficult to judge if it was dead or barely alive and in the twilight our eyes began playing tricks as we thought we saw its chest rising slightly. Thankfully I had my walking stick with me - a rather grand, carved affair presented by a tribal elder in Darfur when I travelled to Sudan on a peace initiative several years ago. So I gingerly prodded the fox several times before declaring the animal well and truly dead.
 We left the spot wondering how he had expired and noted there was a burrow of sorts in the ground by his nose. Perhaps it was his home, or maybe he was a she, a vixen, and if so could there be young cubs in the hole? Feeling protective towards my geese, turkeys and hens I needed to counsel a higher authority on the matter and so phoned a local gamekeeper relaying the drama. It was dusk so we all agreed to meet in the morning and at 8am we were surveying the scene.

WHODUNNIT: Another mystery
grips the Soho 2 Silo crew

 Our man in tweeds and plus-fours came to the conclusion this was an old dog fox, pointing to the grey hairs around its face. Without a second thought he bent down and picked up the corpse for a quick inspection as we collectively stepped back in awe and marvelled at his daring. He declared the fox dead and pointed to some decomposition on its jawline as evidence it had died at least two days earlier. Checking its hindquarters he deduced the animal had been hit by a vehicle and must have crawled its way from the roadside into the woodland, possibly lying starving and injured for several days. The hole it lay next to was the entrance to a rabbit warren and he pointed to several other exits nearby. Summing up he said it was likely it had waited by the hole in a desperate bid to get some food but had been too weak, possibly from internal injuries, to survive.
 We were all well impressed with the gamekeeper's CSI-style analysis and then, knowing we keep livestock, he warned that the body should be buried quickly before the smell of decomposition attracts more foxes to the area. At that point all eyes switched focus onto he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is ... well he did find it first place, didn't he? And so, after taking a pick and shovel from his workshop he headed back towards the body but just before he set off on his grave-digging mission I said it would be a shame to bury the tail as well since it was so bushy and quite magnificent.

TAIL END: Prized possession

 Mr Fox's brush is now sitting in my freezer to preserve its amazing condition. Tomorrow I must find a local taxidermist to treat the tail, pictured left,  which I think will look rather fetching on my bush hat although once my daughter reads this I've no doubt she will have designs on it as well!

SILO TIP

Rats tales ..

NEVER pick up a dead rat by its tail ... it will almost certainly be covered in urine and could lead to the deadly Weil's Disease. These scary rodents aren't incontinent - that's an urban myth - but they're forever marking their territory and their tails get covered in urine as a direct result.
 If you have to pick up a rat - like I did the other day when I found a dead one in the hen run - grab it by the scruff of its neck. And if you do come across a live one do what I also did last week:  run like hell in the opposite direction and find a bloke who can sort it!

SHORT LEGS MEAN LONG ODDS

.. Or why it's difficult to breed Scots Dumpys

 I CAN proudly announce that the first generation of Ridley-bred Scots Dumpys has hatched, but it has been a very long process punctuated with sadness and great difficulty.
Just a few days ago there was much excitement when my friend Morag called to say two of my Dumpys' eggs had reached the hatching stage and the occupants inside were busy chipping their way out ... she owns an incubator just in case some of you city slickers think country folk sit on eggs in their spare time!

ONE DAY OLD: But sadly only one 

is destined to survive

 Sadly one of the chicks, see the pair of fluffy bundles to the right, survived less than 24 hours after its mammoth struggle to get out of its shell; despite being under a heat lamp it wandered out of the warm zone with another chick and perished in the cold. Why these things happen is anyone's guess. May be it was Nature's way of saying this little one was never going to be strong enough to survive.

 Either way the news came as a blow and yet another reminder of how life and death are regular visitors on my farm.
 The reason why Scots Dumpys are incredibly difficult to breed and why the odds are pretty much stacked against them in the game of life, is that some carry a lethal gene.

 When I first encountered the Scots Dumpy, an endangered species 

of hen with a history dating beyond Roman times, and decided to rear them I had to have a quick lesson in genetics.

 The best of breed possess certain qualities including short legs and a boat like shape which makes them waddle as they walk and the most common colours are black and cuckoo but there are some white out there and I'm told a new reddish brown bird is about to make its appearance soon once it has been officially recognised by The Scots Dumpy Club (http://www.scotsdumpyclub.org.uk/breed/) of which I am a member.

 The very genes associated with desirable traits in the breed, such as the short legs, are actually caused by mutations of normal genes. In the wild many of these birds would have perished as they are often easier targets for predators.

NAPOLEON: Is he the father of the new chick - only

time will tell when its feathers come through

 Anyway, here's the science bit. The genes occur in pairs - one received from the bird's mother and one from its father - and if the dominant genes are associated with short legs, for instance, then the chick will have short legs.  However, these dominant mutant genes that give short legs in Scots Dumpy are also associated with problems during incubation and as such chicks with two copies of these genes might never hatch.

 The presence of the Scots Dumpys' lethal genes means your hatch rate is automatically reduced by 25% before you even start to breed. It seems the odds were even higher against mine ... for instance, I gave Morag 15 eggs and only two reached the hatching stage and then, sadly, only one survived more than 24 hours. I've now given her another batch of eggs and we're hoping for a better success rate. I am hoping to acquire an incubator soon so I will be able to incubate the eggs myself and I will write on the subject of incubation in more detail in the coming weeks.
 In the meantime I will give regular progress reports and updated snippets on the first 'Ridley' Scots Dumpy. With a bit of luck I should take possession of him or her in three months time. At the moment it's far too soon to know the hen's sex let alone its colouring or the length of its legs.

TREAD CAREFULLY THE TURKEYS ARE COMING

.. Or may be not!

ANT & DEC have spent most of their days parading around the grounds puffing out their chests, fanning their feathers and generally posing making a two second gasping sound like air escaping quickly from a tyre in between the more familiar 'turkey gobble' noises they also emit.
 The whole point of having such a grand array of feathers is to attract the female of the species but these two appear to be so obsessed with each other it's almost as though they're joined at the hip.

ANT & DEC: best friends forever?

Occasionally they fall out and embark on some awful clashes (see video at bottom of this post) but no one ever emerges as the alpha male and the spats are quickly forgotten as they resume their vanity strolls with their four females following closely behind.
 Of course now that Spring is in the air there's all sorts of other activities breaking out as the garden birds start to sing and perform in front of their female counterparts, the geese have laid eggs and while one nest has been abandoned two of the geese seem determined to produce goslings.

Turkey troubles: The ubiquitous baster!

Drawing reproduced with kind permission

of Scott Kroll from 

http://kingcrowcomics.blogspot.co.uk/

 As discrete as the geese have been in the act of mating, Ant and Dec suddenly appear to have discovered their purpose in life and have started pursuing their Bourbon Red ladies with open enthusiasm. Turkey mating is euphemistically called 'treading' to those in the know and the Stags have certainly been treading ... at every available opportunity. The female usually sits down and then the male turkey does his thing, but after observing Ant and Dec close up, they look as though they're only giving their opposite numbers a massage by foot and they look as though they're trampling and not treading. I do hope you don't see me as some sort of Peeping Tom character lurking behind the bushes watching turkeys tread but it is important to establish if the eggs that they are laying are fertilised or not. The reason for my concern is that a couple of local friends dropped by and could shed little light on the matter other than to say most turkey breeders use artificial insemination and have special breeding rooms for the purpose. The conversation suddenly gave new meaning to the ubiquitous turkey baster and I could see my grand plans to breed the best Bourbon Reds in the Borders disintegrate. I recalled reading an article about how obese turkeys were unable to mate naturally and so most mass producers employ someone in a breeding unit to "milk" the stags before inseminating the female turkeys. Yes, I know, I also want to pull out my eyeballs and scrub them clean in the shower. I have no idea how it's done and nor do I have any desire to find out, suffice to say there's a lot to be said for organic and traditional farming methods but of course it's no use keeping turkeys if they don't know how to tread!

 I asked the local gamekeeper if he'd observed any treading while wandering about (yes, these are the sort of conversations in which we country folk indulge) and he said he had, to which I then asked about technique and did he think my stags were just standing on the females or were they actually doing something. He seemed quite perplexed by my line of questioning and said "treading is treading and they were treading." Moving swiftly on I waited until another friend happened by and I told her my dilemma. She laughed and said: "Turkeys are very dull. It's all over in seconds and if you blink you'll miss it and that's probably why you've not seen anything."

 Anyway, I'm none the wiser but I guess I will just have to let Nature take its course and hope the eggs are fertile. Now the problem is the nesting boxes I've made for the turkeys are empty so far and I have a feeling any eggs have been laid outside, somewhere.

 I'm going to have to spend the next few days stalking the damned birds to find out where they're stashing their eggs and remove them to a friend of mine who has an incubator. There are just some things I'm not prepared to leave to chance!

TURKEY REPRIEVE

 .. But here comes the axeman to chop off your head!

  WHILE pondering new stock for my small holding I got to thinking it would be nice if I reared some turkeys - being more or less the same shape as hens I thought they couldn't be too much bother but they'd also provide a lot more meat and would make a nice gift for my family over Christmas as table birds. The hens were proving to be easy-peasy, so why would turkeys be any different?

FESTIVE: Traditional Xmas roast

 Like all the best laid plans this one began to fall apart almost as soon as I'd picked up my Bourbon Reds. Turkeys are, apparently, very sensitive creatures and the slightest upheaval in their lives can induce suicidal tendencies or severe depression followed by death. Well no one told me!
 The journey to the Scottish Borders from Whitby proved too traumatic for a couple of the females and within days both died, not quite from shock but the journey triggered an underlying disease according to the post mortem examination results at the nearby animal laboratories.
 The remaining three - two stags and a hen - looked quite forlorn and so after being given a course of anti-biotics I tried to give them as much TLC as a turkey can take. Mercifully all this care and attention began to pay dividends and so after they rallied around I let the three out to wander freely a few hours each day. I then made the mistake of giving them names: Ant, Dec and Little Boots.

CHRISTMAS CRACKERS: The two 

stags roaming on the range

By December I had become quite attached to the trio and so decided that after their emotional upheaval they should be left well alone. This rather irritated hubby who had been looking forward to carving a halal turkey at the annual festive Ridley gathering.
 However as January arrived problems began to emerge when it became obvious a more mature Ant and Dec both had designs on Little Boots. The two stags were constantly fighting and the hen had a permanently worried look and so I discussed the issue with my better half. His solution was predictable and final and involved an axe whereas my response was to add to the gaggle of turkeys and therefore increase our chances of breeding decent table birds for Christmas 2013. I reasoned that because there is a growing number of converts to Islam in the UK and many of them still go and see their families around the Christmas season; offering halal turkeys would, I thought, be a best seller and I still think it could be. Food is always a great unifier but, speaking from experience, it's always daunting spending Christmas Day with your non-Muslim loved ones when you can't share the turkey roast because it's not halal.

ANT & DEC & LITTLE BOOTS : For the chop?

 However hubby was having none of it and put his foot down. No more turkeys. He was adamant, even raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips. It was an open and shut case. "No" meant "no" and there was clearly no wiggle room. So I did what I always do when faced with such adamance - I sought a second opinion. I went through the Google search engine and found a turkey farmer in the south and asked him; the wonderful thing about countryside folk is that they're very happy to share their knowledge, their years of wisdom, inside tricks and know how. Coming from the backstabbers' paradise of Fleet Street where you share absolutely nothing but misinformation and watch your back 100pc of the time, even with your closest work colleagues, this caring sharing culture among countryfolk was completely alien to me at first. But people in the boondocks genuinely want to help their fellow man or woman.
 Anyway my new best friend, the turkey farmer, offered a less drastic solution than hubby - either slaughter the hen or one of the stags but change the ratio otherwise the stags could kill each other, and so I went to hubby and gave him the option. Well it turns out he was just as attached to the birds as I was and so not only were all three given a reprieve, I was told to go and buy three more hens. Result!
 Being a good and obedient wife I was straight on to it and by the next day I'd located a trio of Bourbon Reds off the A1 in Yorkshire and went off to collect them. They turned out to be the Christmas leftovers from a turkey farm and so had also been given a second lifeline. They are collectively known as the Three Degrees.
 So then there were six and like all good stories there should be a happy ending ... but this is the countryside and I am a greenhorn homesteader and there's another installment but you will have to wait for a few more days. Brace yourself for the unexpected.

SILO SNIPPET

Squirrels at the double

DOUBLE TROUBLE: Reds at play 

And here is the proof I promised you a few postings back - two red squirrels in the same shot. I caught them just before sun down today playing in their favourite tree.
 But just a couple of days earlier a big, fat grey squirrel was hanging around the same tree and regulars callers to this blog known they present a deadly problem to the reds.
 Greys carry something called Squirrel Pox and while they're immune the red squirrel isn't.
 The dilemma over intervention, or not, provoked quite a lot of feedback with the majority reaching the conclusion that Nature should be allowed to take its course ... personally, I'm not sure sure.

WHODUNNIT

.. Or an Eggciting mystery

 THE GEESE have been acting a tad weird in recent days, especially Jack the gander who has been more protective than normal when spotting strangers in the vicinity of the courtyard.
 And while the turkeys always get short shrift from the geese - think of rival American inner city street gangs -  there have been some barn-storming show downs in which the Geese, Jedburgh's feathered

GANGS OF ... Jedburgh?

version of the Los Angeles Crips have valiantly fought off any attempts by the turkeys (think Bloodz) to encroach on what they see as their territory.
 Bad Ass Jack and his three lady Crips are outnumbered by the six Bourbon Reds but the geese do have attitude and when the gander gets his dander up they are scary set of dudes.

 Anyway, I think you get the picture and when I say it has got worse it really is like a war zone out there at times. I put it down to the arrival of Spring and in some ways that's true.
 But it now emerges Spring has already Sprung in our neck of the woods because the geese have laid at least eight eggs and the numbers are rising by the day. This has created a great Whodunnit? because there are many questions unanswered and the plot thickens.
 After setting up a surveillance point I've tried to keep a close observation on the nesting site. I really need a pair of night vision goggles but he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is has refused to buy a pair on the grounds that Muslims buying such equipment soon become the target of round-the-clock surveillance themselves!

NIGHT VISION: I can see clearly now

I keep telling him the Feds on this side of the Border are not as paranoid about Muslims as their English counterparts ... another good reason to vote YES in the forthcoming referendum, so I will probably go online and buy some myself.  What I have been able to establish so far is that the female geese each take it in turns to sit on the nest during the hours of dusk to dawn but I have no idea who is laying the eggs, if it was a group effort or even if Jack has  played a lead role in this production. I thought geese were monogamous which means, if that's the case, then only the eggs belonging to Vera will be fertile; but if Jack has been canoodling with Bluebell and Queenie the end result will be a cross between Swedish Ölandsgås and French Toulouse. 

 I'm calling a friend who may remove some and incubate them as geese are apparently terrible mums-to-be and lose interest very quickly. I do have a degree of sympathy because I can't think of anything worse than sitting on a nest for hours on end when there are far more interesting things to do. Sadly none of my hens have emerged as broody either, because that is another solution - a broody hen is worth her weight in gold as she'll incubate anyone's eggs.
 Anyway here is a 50 second mini film and like all the best Whodunnits? it opens with the scene of the crime:

SILO SNIPPET

 Guess who got some Easter eggs - yours truly from the geese Bluebell, Queenie & Vera. I can't believe they've been hiding them from me until now but there are at least eight and there could be more on the way ... no wonder Jack the Gander has been even more hostile to visitors than usual. Pictures coming soon.