NEW ARRIVALS

..Cause a flutter with more new arrivals!

DES RES: Home sweet home

for the new doves

 DESPITE a pair of Peregrines taking out three of my four Indian fantails, I decided to buy some more birds since the falcons should be heading off for sunnier climes as part of their annual migration.
 And the recent arrival half a dozen more beautiful white doves really cheered up the lone fantail who will hopefully pass on his rapidly acquired 'avoid and detection' skills to the newbies making them falcon-aware before Spring is sprung.
 They're all still very young and more than happy to hang around the house although they don't seem to have taken to the dovecot lovingly painted and erected by hubby a few months back.

SITTING PRETTY: This dove has just

laid two eggs

 Instead, the newbies are attracted to a beautifully crafted dovecot recently bought as a gift by my mother.

The trouble is it is pretty much lying where she left it and now the backyard resembles a builder's emporium as we have proceeded with long-awaited house renovations.

 He-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is has been dragging his heels over installing the new dovecot and now one of the doves has made a nest and laid two eggs. 

This makes any installation difficult until they hatch ... that's his excuse anyway although it will not wash with my octogenarian mum, as he will soon find out. Watch this space for a future article on Algerian men and their English mother-in-laws!

NO YOLK IS NO JOKE

SHELL-SHOCKED: Can you spot the odd three out!

 .. Or who is failing to deliver in the hen pen? 

 ONE of the joys of keeping chickens is collecting their eggs towards the end of the day and now I'm picking up around nine from my dozen hens which I reckons is quite a good payback.

 At this rate I'll be setting up a roadside "eggs for sale" sign and operating an honesty box. Some of our visitors to the Borders are still talking about the concept with incredulity and commenting on how such a system could never work in the South ... a sad indictment on the age we live in, perhaps.

 But something decidedly odd has been happening in recent days - one of the Scots Dumpys is laying miniature eggs containing no yolk only egg white. I told hubby that we should market them as Californian Crackers for folk who don't want a yolk in their omlette but, of course, we can't guarantee the culprit will continue laying yolkless eggs for the rest of her laying life.

 I'm not sure who is the culprit - it can't be Josephine as she is sitting on a clutch of eggs having gone all broody - but the phenomenon sent me diving into the books and making phone calls to find out what is going on.

 Mis-shapen eggs are not that unusual - it's just supermarkets never put them out on the shelves and egg producers usually discard them.

 So far I've gleaned  that it can be a common occurrence in new layers who are still trying to sync their reproductive system, or it could be a lack of grit and oyster shell or it could be a sudden shock just as the egg is travelling down through the hen's system.

 Well my Dumpys by now should have no problems with their reproductive system and so I will put some extra oyster shell into the hen pen to avoid any more yolkless eggs which are known in the trade as fart eggs. I kid you not, that's what they're called - don't shoot the message folks, I'm merely passing on some inside knowledge.

WARNING: BARBARIAN AT WORK

.. Or bringing a touch of Algeria to the Borders

  MY husband is a Barbarian. No, he really IS a Barbarian. Born in some remote mountain village in the Berber region of Algeria, he often talks with a great fondness about his birthplace and the centuries-old traditions which have come to define the people who live there.

DANGER: Barbarian at work

 So when we moved to the Borders he said he would feel quite at home and put into practice some of the ways of his village. This actually filled me with dread in case he was expecting me to get up at 5am every day, milk a herd of goats, make a round of cheese and bake a dozen loaves of bread while collecting the wood, lighting the fires and getting the breakfast ready for the man of the house ... and all before 8am. That's what he reckons Algerian women in his village do, anyway.
 For the past few days he has disappeared off into the wood and apart from the noise of the chainsaw, tree branches snapping and other timber-like sounds I've not bothered to find out exactly what he's been up to focussing more instead on becoming a bee keeper. It's still some weeks away before I get my first colony but I want to make sure I am well prepared for the new arrivals.

  FOX-proof fence                       

 So imagine my surprise today when I went to see for myself what was occupying hubby's time. It turns out he has been building a fox-proof barrier to protect the turkeys, should they want to try nesting outside again. OK, so it's not Hadrian's Wall but it is an environmentally friendly version of a dry stone wall and it's a mega impressive structure.

 As you can see from the pictures the base is built with an intricate weave of tiny branches he snapped off from the lower trunks of trees and as the wall gets taller the size of the branches become thicker and stronger. They have been reclaimed from storm damaged trees on the forest floor. It's quite amazing, I'm sure you will agree. He proudly says the design is Algerian and will enable tiny creatures like mice and voles to pass through while blocking the path of our enemies Mr Fox and Old Brock.

 He also reckons birds will be drawn like magnets during the nesting season and his wall will become a host to all sorts of wildlife while repelling the predators who've made our lives such a misery these last few weeks. Regular visitors to this blog know the pain we've endured following the loss a nesting goose and turkey. Should you want to build a similar barrier I am sure my husband will be happy to advise and give some tips on how make such a structure. I'd also love to hear your feedback as well.

 I may even show the design to SNP leader Alex Salmond should, in the event of Scotland being blessed with independence, he wants a cost effective and environmentally friendly version of the Roman Wall built to keep out the neighbours south of the Borders!

INVASION OF THE EGG SNATCHERS

 Another case for 'B' ... Jedburgh's CSI

RAT SNATCHERS: Painting by Igor Maykov

 AN INTRIGUING series of events has rather focussed our attention these last few days - every morning a part digested egg has been found in the rear yard. Two contained the fully formed embryos of what looked like tiny turkeys while another couple of crushed shells simply could've come out of the hen pen and contained nothing more than traces of yolk.

 Since I collect daily from the hens I ruled out foul play from the pen but wondered where else the hens eggs had come from and who was the culprit and where did the turkey ones come from? And even though I'm still reeling from the last badger visit, I knew Old Brock couldn't be blamed this time round purely because he wouldn't have left any evidence. A fox would've scoffed the turkey embryo while perhaps leaving a few fragments of shell. Then I remembered a story I'd been told a few weeks back, I thought it was an urban myth, but it is perfectly illustrated in the charming picture above right by Latvian artist Igor Maykov. There was nothing else to do I simply had to call in the countryside crime buster, Jedburgh's equivalent of CSI Miami's 'H' aka Horatio Caine. It's a wonder 'B' hasn't gone ex-directory as every other day there's seems to be a murder-style mystery to be solved on the farm but like most folk in the Scottish Borders he's happy to oblige when we struggling townies get out of our depth.

ANOTHER EMPTY EGG SHELL: But no trail or other
clues between it and the stable door in the background

 And so local gamekeeper 'B' duly arrived, surveyed the scene you can see on the right and scratched his head. He paced up and down and walked in and out of the stable several times - it was empty apart from the surrogate Turkey mum. I told him how I collected the hens eggs everyday and since the nesting boxes are all off the ground it would be too difficult for a rat raid, especially in broad daylight.

 He asked about the broody turkey and how many eggs she was sitting on. I told him I didn't know as they were due to hatch any day and she wouldn't let me near her. I told him that she had originally started sitting on her own eggs but I'd replaced them with pot eggs and then changed them to hens eggs. And then, when my other turkey was killed by the fox I'd transferred those eggs to her so she was sitting on a mixture of turkey and hen eggs. The penny dropped, sort of, as I said that.

SILENT WITNESS: The

surrogate turkey.

 Working out all the machinations 'B' said there were several scenarios but that all of the egg shells I'd found came from the same source ... underneath the turkey pictured above left. The real mystery is how they came to land 20 feet away in the yard.

 'B' reckons either several rats baited the turkey during the night and while one distracted her attention to leave the nest the others snatched an egg and rolled it away across the yard to eat. Or the turkey, herself, is separating dud or infertile eggs from the batch which are then being picked up by the opportunistic rodents.

RAT:  Charged, tried and found
guilty in absentia 

 Hens and turkeys will do this if they sense an egg is infertile or if there's something wrong with the developing chick inside. This could explain the near fully-formed eggs we found the other day. I do hope this doesn't mean all of the turkey eggs are duds after their courageous Bourbon Red mum paid the blood price for protecting her nest against a fox recently.

 Time will tell - as for the egg snatchers ... that's another mystery to solve. He-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is has some detective work of his own to do to track down and get rid of these pests.
 And wouldn't it be great if he set up a web cam or infrared night camera up in the yard to catch the thieves in action. There's a great deal going down here but sadly most of it happens when I'm fast asleep.

MISS MOODY GOES BROODY

HEN HOUSE: Now a hot house

for broody Josephine

.. But Josephine still rules the roost

 OF ALL my feathered stock I would say the most anti-social is Josephine. She's a gorgeous looking black Scots Dumpy I bought in Northampton along with my rather spectacular cockerel Napoleon in September last year.
 Dumpys are normally cuddly, social chooks with wonderful characters which is why Josephine's moody temperament stands out in the hen pen where, in terms of pecking order, she commands pole position.
 Basically no one challenges Josephine and the only other Dumpy to interact with her is Napoleon; the two are normally inseparable and always sleep in the same hen house (there are four abodes from which to choose) with him perching and her nesting in a corner.

HORATIO & MOODY JOSEPHINE: Used to
be inseparable

 Well something very interesting happened yesterday - she occupied the smallest, tallest hen house and refused to budge. It's a favourite laying spot for the rest of the hens who were becoming increasingly vocal at not being able to get access to lay their eggs. He-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is stuck his hand in to engage with her and is still nursing his right fore finger for the trouble ... proving that he is hen-pecked but not by me!

 Being more wary I lifted up the hatch and took a quick peek - she expanded her body by fluffing her feathers and made a really odd, throaty gurgling sound which sent me running for the poultry books. Having lost one hen to egg peritonitus I wanted to make sure she wasn't going down with something equally terminal. Mercifully Josephine is not ill but her hormones are rampaging ... more so than usual. According to the experts and my chicken manual she is displaying all the symptoms of a broody hen for this time of year.

 Now incase you didn't know, a broody hen is worth her weight in gold for a small holder like me but for professionals it's a nuisance and some simply dip their hormonal hens in a bucket of ice cold water in an attempt to cool down the poor creature and knock her off her cycle. I think that's rather cruel but I'm merely an amateur so will move on swiftly lest someone should accuse me of trying to teach hen veterans how to suck eggs.

EVICTED: Beryl & Ruby

 I returned to Josephine and gently picked her up - and what a surprise I got. Not only was her breast and abdomen hotter than Hades she was sitting on at least a dozen eggs. She must have simply hijacked a full nest, knocked out some of her own and has commandeered it for sole occupancy.
 Horatio is non too happy as he always slept there while Ruby and Beryl were regular occupants on the very high overhead perch. Now they've all had to find alternative accommodation until Josephine completes her broody cycle.
 Hens' eggs take around 21 days to hatch so it will be interesting to see if she stays the course. I'm also wondering, with some concern, if she will make a good mother given her mood swings when she's not broody.
 * Meanwhile the surrogate turkey mum is still sitting on a pile of eggs, including those belonging to the Bourbon Red who was snatched by a fox last week. She also makes the same throaty, gurgling sound if you get too near ... hope it's not catching!

COCKERELS PUT IN THE SIN BIN

RELUCTANT RUBY: Housebound

and egg bound 

.. Hens give troublesome trio the red card

 I'M STILL dithering about launching into a full breeding programme with the Scots Dumpys which will mean segregating the cockerels from the hens and then pairing up selected couples and building different pens.
 Once I do that when I incubate eggs I will have a rough idea of what is going to hatch whereas at the moment it's a bit of a pot-pourri. Serious breeders must be reading this with equal measures of disgust and horror, I've no doubt.
 So in the hen pen it's a bit of a free for all which causes its own problems as the hens just want to focus on laying eggs and chillin' and the cockerels want to do what they do.
 The result has been chaos so I've put Napoleon, Horatio and Jumpin' Jack in the poultry equivalent of the sin bin these last few days to give the girls a break and a chance to restore their ruffled feathers and dignity. Poor Ruby was egg bound last week, she was so stressed out she wouldn't leave her little blue home pictured above and to the right . I gave her a warm bath, 20 minute massage, copious amounts of top dollar virgin olive oil at both ends, and then steamed her bottom. After a quiet overnight stay in the kitchen she resumed normal service which was a relief - I really did not want to get out the rubber gloves! An egg block is potentially fatal.

WRONG SIDE OF THE WIRE: Jack, Horatio & Napoleon

 But it was one of those straw-breaking moments and so I decided my three cockerels would have to spend their days on the outside looking in. In the first instance it did create a sort of unity and adversity so old spats and rivalries were set aside while they stood staring and glaring at the indignity of being on the wrong side of the wire.
 Many poultry breeders are surprised that three of my 15 Scots Dumpys are cockerels and that they all live together in the same pen quite happily. Of course they do have their moments but in the pecking order of things Napoleon is the boss and he runs a disciplined outfit.
 Dumpys really are a lovely breed and they are very friendly, each one is a character. Quite why they've become an endangered species is beyond me.

TURKEY TRAGEDY FORCES RE-THINK

.. AS VIXEN STRIKES

  THE clumps of feathers told me all I needed to know.  It's happened again. Another tragedy and more loss of life but this time the villain was not a badger but a fox ... a vixen with hungry cubs to feed - and before all you townies go "aaaah, cute" with a bit of luck she will have carried out her last kill by dawn tomorrow.
 As regulars of Soho2Silo know, I'm still reeling from the badger attack which took out a goose and her entire clutch of eggs last week and while I agonised over what I could do about the turkey who chose to set up a secret nest near the hen pen (http://soho2silo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nature-or-nurture.html) I did nothing. I decided to leave it to Nature and now there are self-recriminations.

TELL TALE SIGNS: The clumps of feathers reveal tragedy

 The unfortunate goose from Sweden was called Queenie but my poor slain turkey didn't even have a name. She was one of the Three Degrees, a trio of Bourbon Reds I bought from a farm in North Yorkshire.
 In the meantime some dear friends bought me an incubator and while I was tempted to take the turkey's eggs hubby pleaded with me to let her continue and so she did until the early hours of this morning. And no, I'm not blaming he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is and in truth he is just as upset as me at the loss of more stock because we are fond of them all.
 My bedroom overlooks the scene of the crime but since I have taken to going to bed listening to BBC Radio 4 on an evening to drown out the noise of the clog dancers who inhabit the attic (more about them another time) I heard nothing.
 This morning I called in my own CSI expert and he surveyed the scene for around half an hour and went off down a bankside leading on to a river. When he returned he gave me his assessment.
 The killer was a vixen who, judging from the clumps of feathers around the nest site, had struggled to rip the Bourbon Red turkey from her nest. He says it was a vixen because a dog fox would have eaten his kill just a few yards away but this fox took the bird all the way to her lair where she would have fed her waiting cubs.

SURROGATE MUM:  Bourbon Red turkey
sits on a variety of eggs due to hatch next week

 He followed the trail of feathers through the woodland and down to the riverside, then along to a small hump-backed bridge, over a road and into some more woodland. By all accounts my turkey must have put up one hell of a struggle because of the clumps of feathers at various points en route. Delicate paw marks also revealed the sex of the fox.
 And there's more - the gamekeeper reckons she will be back and, if wanted, he will be lying in wait. I nodded vigorously. Unlike badgers, foxes are not a protected species and, as any farmer will tell you, they are a pest and should be shot on sight. No time for sentiment. I am not going to lose any more of my animals if I can help it.
 As usual, where there is death there is also hope of life. The eggs were left intact and I gathered them all up and shoved them under a turkey which is nesting in the stable. Her own eggs are in the incubator and at the moment she is sitting on a couple of abandoned goose eggs and half a dozen chicken eggs as well as a pot egg.

NEST EGG: The start of another turkey nest

 I don't know if the eggs left behind by her sister  are still in a condition to hatch - only time will tell but whatever happens you will be among the first to know.
 And there's still more - the last of the Three Degrees has started laying eggs in her own secret nest very close to the house. The gamekeeper has advised that as soon as she starts sitting on her batch of eggs I should intervene and move them all into the stable where they will be safely locked up every evening. I am going to take his advice - at the moment I feel it is better to nurture rather than leave it to Nature.
 What do you think?

EVERY CLOUD

.. and hope still springs eternal

 THERE'S still an awful pall of gloom hanging in the air since the brutal demise of Swedish goose Queenie who steadfastly sat on a clutch of eggs through all weather in the hope of becoming a Mother Goose. Sadly, on the eve of them hatching, her plans were brought to an abrupt end by at least one badger.
 But there's little time to dwell on death in the countryside and yesterday I was given a timely reminder of the hope which springs eternal courtesy of a tiny little ball of yellowish fluff seen in the video.
 I'm not sure what name to give him/her - yes, I
know I shouldn't give my animals names or get too attached to them but I am an accidental farmer and didn't sign up for producing livestock without becoming emotionally involved.
 Farmers might seem a cold, detached  bunch but from some of the private messages I've received, following the death of Queenie, it seems there are a number of great big softies out there who genuinely share my pain.
 To lovingly raise livestock only to have them cut down in their prime by pests like badgers and foxes is extremely frustrating.
 However, now I have to focus on the living and Jack and Vera still have a few more eggs left to hatch though I'm not sure if they're duds. Interestingly enough, when they take junior out for a stroll Bluebell, another Swedish goose, sits on the remaining clutch.
 The whole Queenie episode has really distressed her because the incident probably reminded Bluebell about her own near-death experience caused by a group of wild mink several years back. Her then owner nursed her around the clock and miraculously she survived. Unable to mate and lay her own eggs she now seems to have assumed a matronly role and is more than happy to help out Jack and Vera.

'BADGER HATES SOCIETY, AND INVITATIONS, AND DINNER, AND ALL THAT SORT OF THING,' Kenneth Grahame

.. And I no longer like him either

LIKE millions of kids, I was brought up on the Wind in the Willows childrens' classic by Scottish writer Kenneth Grahame which probably explains my romantic notions of the furry creatures who inhabit our countryside.
 Well my love affair with Mr Badger has now officially ended, quite dramatically and in tears. He is the prime suspect in a brutal slaying, a silent, ruthless killing machine which shows no mercy.
 This morning I went to visit Queenie, a beautiful Swedish goose of mine who has sat patiently for nearly a month on a clutch of around 10 eggs - not only had she vanished but the eggs had disappeared as well.
 With my limited knowledge of the countryside, I ruled out Mr Fox. Had it been him there would have been a right kerfuffle, lots of feathers and smashed eggs. This was not the case but there were very few other clues at the crime scene.
 I was going to call the local constabulary thinking the culprit may be human but
before bringing in the Old Bill, I picked up the phone to consult Jedburgh's answer to CSI Miami's Horatio Caine. As you can see from the 25 second video above there was very little to go on in terms of culprits and clues.
 Yet without the benefit of all the hi-tech kit and glamorous staff on hand to assist Caine, my man in combats had the whole crime sussed in under 30 minutes.
 Confirming what we knew already - no nest disturbance or fighting at the crime scene - he went off to search the surrounding area.
 And from what he discovered he deduced poor Queenie had been seized by an opportunist badger who dragged her off to a lair about 200 yards away and then killed her. He took me to the hollow under a tree where there were a few tell tale grey and white feathers which resembled the ones Queenie once sported. Badgers have immensely powerful jaws and this one left no other trace of my beautiful goose, given to me as a gift by a very good friend. Had she been 'done in' by a fox there would've been traces of rib cage and other non-chewable bones and debris, said my forensic expert.

QUEENIE: Tragic end

 Badgers also find eggs hard to resist and the silent killer would have returned to the nest to then devour all of the eggs and their contents thereby leaving very little trace of what had happened. As a protected species these creatures polarise opinion. This lot absolutely love the nocturnal villain: http://www.beautifulbritain.co.uk/htm/wildlife_gardening/badger_facts.htm as do folk like me brought up on stories from the pages of Wind in the Willows. However living in the country, trying to rear animals, has completely revised my opinion of Mr Badger and now I find myself at one with most of the farming community.
 The badger who attacked Queenie not only robbed me of a beautiful pet goose but he - and his accomplices - also destroyed any chance for the next generation of geese and her chance to be a Mother Goose.
 Apparently badgers are opportunistic so it is likely a terrible coincidence that they set about her just as the eggs were due to hatch. But I feel very angry and helpless and wonder what I could've done to prevent this from happening. The answer, in short, is nothing if I want my animals to roam freely.

SILENT KILLER: Badger like this one

killed by goose

 Unless I keep the livestock under lock down 24/7 I suppose they will be a target for predators. I've spent so much time and effort focussing on Mr Fox that I hadn't taken in to account the badgers - there are more than 50 setts within a mile radius of where I live in the Scottish Borders so I now need to pit my wits against a totally new predator ... within the confines of the law, of course.
 Any suggestions would be most welcome.
                                                                                            

A HELPING HAND

..Or a hindrance

 What a rollercoaster day it has been and the dramas are continuing well into the night.
 Vera, my beautiful Toulouse goose proudly showed off a newly-hatched gosling early this morning and by noon there was another yellow fluffy ball beginning to emerge from one of the remaining nine eggs. See the short video clip below.
 'Nature not nurture', I thought to myself as I walked away but an hour later one of the goslings was dead and another was lying exhausted only half way out of its shell. Vera was clearly distressed and my presence near her makeshift nest was only making matters worse so I retreated.
 In the meantime I went to check on the turkeys and their own egg-laying saga - one has stayed out eight nights on the run now keeping a lonely vigil on her nest away from prying eyes ... although a previous posting reveals its secrets. The other turkey who is nesting has been sitting on her eggs in a stable for nearly as long, but I must confess I've been nicking her eggs and saving them for the new incubator which arrived a few days ago.

And just to make sure she's not distressed by the theft I replaced each delivery with a fake, pot egg. My other half pointed out that now she is sitting on a clutch of pot eggs it's rather cruel to let the deception continue indefinitely. His observations have really pricked my conscience and so I've now started replacing the pot eggs with those laid by my Scots Dumpys. Yes, yes, I know - it seems I'm using a shovel to dig myself into a deeper hole than the one I've already made.
'O, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive,' wrote Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott. I wonder if he kept birds?
 Anyway I daren't think of the deep psychological damage I'm going to do when the turkey hatches hens' eggs and looks at her tiny offspring for the first time. Nor am I sure how wee chooks will react by a massive, big mum who looks nothing like them.
 And I've no idea what's in store for me tomorrow when I check Vera or if the little chappie in the film above will still be alive.
 It seems if I remain hands off then disaster could strike if the little gosling loses his struggle to get out of his shell but if I meddle with Nature then I could make things worse.
 Once again the thorny dilemma of Nature v Nurture looms large.


                                               

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?

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!

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: