Saints Above - a success story at last

.. No kidding, meet baby Charlotte

ROLO: Leader of the pack, or rather herd

THIS winter I took possession of a small herd of wild British Primitive Goats from a lovely farmer in Cumbria who, because of health reasons, had been forced to sell up.
 The goats' main purpose is really conservation management because they're not prolific milk producers and since they're wirey, boney animals you would be hard pressed to breed them for meat. I thought they'd be ideal to bring some of the wilder pastures under control the natural way while fertilising the ground as they went!
 However I'm wondering if they could become a bit of a tourist attraction because the history of this herd is staggering - their lineage can apparently be traced right back to St Cuthbert, one of the most significant saints in Christianity with a cult following.

DAISY: One of the smaller goats in my

herd of British Primitives

St Cuthbert: 634-687

He died in 687 but his followers decided almost 200 years later to set out on a journey to find a fitting, lasting burial place for him after the threat of a Viking invasion, and since everything took months if not years in medieval times, such pilgrimages involved a great deal of forward planning.
 So when they left their island base at Lindisfarne Priory they took with them plenty of livestock to eat on the way. They wandered for a full seven years, lugging the saint's bones about with them, until in 883 they were given a church at Chester-le-Street, near Durham.
 In the late 10th century a fresh Danish invasion threatened, so Cuthbert's bones were moved again, this time to Ripon, over 300 years after he had first come to the great Abbey as a master. After only a few months at Ripon, Cuthbert was once more carted off.  In 1104 they were finally moved to the new Durham cathedral, where a magnificent shrine had been prepared. During this final move the body was found to be perfectly preserved as was the head of St. Oswald (apparently placed with Cuthbert's body for safety).
 Sorry I digress ... you must be wondering what this has to do with my goats. Well it appears that the herd accompanying St Cuthbert's entourage were so badly behaved they either escaped or were cut loose to wander wild and freely around Northumbria and the Borders.

FAMILY AFFAIR: Mum, Ivy and little Charlotte enjoying a

rare bit of sunshine in the Borders

 There are still wild goats that roam around the Cheviots to this day and my little herd is an off shoot. So that's their claim to fame.
 All I can say is that this wandering gene must still be implanted because my goats get all over the place - including the top of a neighbour's roof! They are great climbers but I have managed to bring them under control courtesy of an electric fence. After a wee zap on their noses, they no longer seem curious about the grass on the other side of the fence, thank goodness.

A FEW HOURS OLD: The new kid on

the block makes her first appearance

 One of my goats - Lily - ate a couple of rhododendrum leaves when she escaped ... and that could've proved fatal. Myself and a friend who is training to become a vet, spent a good deal of time over two days pumping her full of Earl Grey tea to cleanse out the toxins. It worked.
 When I took possession of the herd I was told all the nannies were carrying courtesy of the magnificent looking billy or male goat, called Rolo. So far only one - Ivy - has produced a kid and she was without name until the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge named their second born Charlotte.  So please meet Charlotte - the next generation of pure bred British Primitive Goat. And what a lively little cracker she is proving to be.
 There was a heart-stopping moment when she didn't appear to want to take milk from her mum but he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is intervened. A sharp pull on the udder and a squirt of warm milk in Charlotte's face did the trick - I was well impressed.
 Despite her near brush with death, Lily looks as though she's fit to burst and so I'm hoping she will produce a kid soon but Daisy and Rose look too skinny to be pregnant. We'll see ... watch this space.

THREE LITTLE MAIDS

.. Now all are gone

 I recently sent out a snippet reporting how I'd seen a fox being chased across a field by all 8 of my peafowl ... of course appearances can be deceptive and the master of deception as regular readers know is The Fox!
 A few days later three of my peahens disappeared without trace leaving me to conclude that the silly birds were lured in to a trap by the cunning foxes which plague these parts of the Borders. And what better way than to lure someone into a false sense of security by allowing them to believe they are the hunters and not the hunted.

OUT-FOXED: Last one standing. My Indian peafowl was one

of a quartet but now she's on her own ... and without a name 

 Either that or someone netted the birds but that theory seems most unlikely unless any readers from this region can tell me otherwise after experiencing similar unexplained disappearances.
 Their absence has not only caused me some upset but now that the mating season is upon us you can imagine the three peacocks - Albert, Edward and Harry - are non too pleased by the shortage of peahens.
 Left standing is Philomena, a white peahen and the last of the Indian blue peahens. I'd not given her a name but any suggestions are most welcome <she's pictured right>. If they are laying eggs I've not seen any so far and am unlikely too since they roam freely during the day and perch high up in a sycamore tree at dusk.

Everything is a source of fun
Nobody's safe, for we care for none
Life is a joke that's just begun
Three little maids from school 

SILO SNIPPET

 UNBELIEVABLE! Yesterday just before dusk a magnificent looking fox ambled across the pasture ... with all eight peafowl in tow. He was like the Pied Piper as he trotted over the grass followed by five peanhens and the three peacocks. Was he trying to lure the birds into the bushes for a quick bite or were they chasing him away? Suffice to say I ran out across the fields and using the lure of corn brought the daft birds back to home base. Can anyone out there explain this bizzare behaviour?

EGG-GATE

.. Or Part II of the goose egg drama 

SINCE I dived in to the alien world of the small-holder, when I moved to the Scottish Borders from Soho in 2011, I've learned some weird and wonderful things like how to unblock an egg-bound hen using olive oil and hot steam and how to give a reluctant cockerel a wash 'n' blow dry and foot spa to get rid of a red mite infestation.

 But I think my latest foray into animal husbandry takes some beating. Recently I regaled you with the tale of my goose Vera whose attempt to build a nest and lay some eggs was being thwarted by a scavenging weasel or stoat.

 Vera then seemed to throw in the towel and stopped laying altogether. A friend of mine suggested I put a handful of golf balls inside her nest to encourage her to carry on ... and it worked. The Toulouse goose started laying more eggs and, as a precaution, I took a couple and replaced them with more golf balls to deter the intruder. Seemingly unaware of this duplicity Vera has carried on laying and yesterday she began sitting on the nest full-time.

 The nest is inside a ramshackled lean-to hubby built last year when Vera laid more than a dozen eggs - none of which hatched. The previous year she only hatched one but sadly Peewee, her offspring, was taken by a fox just as his feathers were starting to come through.

The job of returning the eggs

would prove more difficult 

 So you see Vera's attempts at motherhood have been punctuated with failure and tragedy which I think has also been reflected in Jack the gander's moods.

HATCHING HOUSE: Jack guards the
outside while Vera sits on her nest

 Now that she has moved out of the goose house full-time to sit on the eggs, Jack has been patrolling outside with all the ferocity of a pit bull backed up by Bluebell. Trying to return the two eggs I'd taken previously has not been an easy task. Whenever Vera has taken a break from sitting on the eggs Bluebell steps in and Jack is never far away from guarding the lean-to. This time all three geese are determined that there will be a new generation to rear and follow them.

Even the arrival of the postman, who now no longer gets out of his mail van, has failed to distract Jack from his sentry duty and nor could he be bribed by a bag of tasty morsels. As you can see from my amateur video, Jack is not in the mood for shenanighans.

 Eventually, after using some stealth I managed to put the two eggs down next to Vera last night as she was napping and this morning I noticed they were safely tucked under her along with the golf balls. Incubation is going to take between 28 and 35 days so I'm hopeful we might have some goslings before the General Election in the UK on May 7.

FEATHERING HER NEST: Vera pulls feathers from her ches

to line the nest including golf balls as well as eggs!

 Of course there's many a slip between then and now. We have to keep the area fox free and Vera will be most vulnerable at night after dusk. There's also a large badger sett nearby so we need to ensure that they're not around - one badger did take Queenie, a swedish Kohn goose from her nest the day before they were due to hatch back in 2013 hence hubby's decision to build the lean-to around the nest.

 If you have any tips please let me know. Hopefully the next reports on Jack and Vera will be happy ones.

ANOTHER MYSTERY WHODUNNIT ... AND IT'S NOT MR FOX!

.. Chief suspect still four legged and furry

 REGULARS to this blog know all about the trials and tribulations I've experienced since quitting the high life in Soho for the good life in the Scottish Borders more than three years ago.

WEASEL snapped trying to pop a goose 

egg

 The chief architect of my misery has always been the fox - and at every turn they (there's been a few) have wiped out my entire turkey flock apart from one very nervous Bourbon Red called Ant; possibly one goose, definitely more than 20 hens, an aviary of white doves, a couple of peafowl, a few domestic pheasant and a couple of guineau fowl.
 Over the winter months, apart from a couple of sightings of a small fox, my little menangerie has escaped unscathed and now that we are full swing in to Spring we're still ever vigilant for Mr Fox.
 However we now have a new mystery - not quite a murder one - unless you subscribe to life beginning in the egg. Vera, one of my Toulouse geese has laid around a dozen over the last couple of weeks in a small lean to built by hubby in 2014 when she began nesting last Spring.

LINE UP OF SUSPECTS: Stoat, weasel and ferret, whodunnit?

 Each night she heads back to her usual home to sleep and every morning she goes to her lean-to to lay an egg. I noticed the other day some of the eggs were smashed which caused no amount of outrage from Jack, the gander.

 He has now taken to attacking anything with a pulse and even the postman refuses to leave the safety of his delivery van these days, so ferocious is Jack.

 I removed two eggs the other day after Vera managed to amass four - just in case the peacocks or guineau fowl were sneaking in and nicking the eggs.
 By last night she'd amassed half a dozen  and I thought any day now she'll start to sit full time on her collection but this morning, as you can see from my short video, I found fragments of smashed egg shell. I'd secured the lean-to last night after I'd locked up the rest of the birds and the peafowl had gone to roost, so I knew the egg thief must be an outside as opposed to an inside job.

 Since the lean-to was locked I knew it was fox and badger proof so I started to ask around among countrywise folk. I couldn't understand what had got in to eat the eggs. We've now narrowed it down to a number of suspects: Rats, stoats, weasels or ferrets.

 Somehow I don't think it's rats. Since I introduced three partly feral cats the rat and mice population has drastically been reduced ... and that could be the problem. These creatures are natural prey to stoats, weasels and ferrets so if there are any hanging around the farm their regular rodent diet has been severely disrupted.

 So how to solve the problem before Vera stops laying any more eggs. Balls! Golf balls to be precise. I've placed them on Vera's nest and as I type she's just sat on the nest to lay another egg. I will

remove that and slip in another golf ball tonight.
 The plan is when Vera starts sitting full time I will somehow replace the balls with the real eggs I collected previously.
 I'm not sure if this is going to work so keep following and I will give updates. As usual, any feedback and/or advice would be most welcome.
 As you can see from the last video Vera is hacked off and Jack is more angry than usual - even wanting to bite the hand that feeds him which is really disconcerting since I'm not usually targetted by the gander.

TO BE FRANK

..OR how pleasant pheasant is turning into a stalker

FRANKLY I'm not impressed with Spring 

2015

 IT'S the mating season and don't we know it.
 The gardens are ringing with a variety of sounds as song birds pair up with their ideal mates and busy themselves building nests.
 Even Horatio the Scots Dumpy cockerel has got his mojo back. Not only has he found his cock-a-doodle-do but he is finally fulfilling his role in the hen pen with gusto.

FRANKLY I'm not interested,  says 

Thumberlina as Frank looks on

 As regulars to this blog know, my rare breed Scots Dumpys were nearly wiped out some months ago by a couple of foxes that broke in to their crees overnight. Only five survived and they've been in a terrible state ever since.
 However now they have a new challenge ... an overly amorous pheasant who is either too lazy to find his ideal partner or he thinks he is a rooster! I'm not sure which, at the moment, because he has started acting like a cockerel around the hens.
 He starts furiously grunting and pecking at the ground as though he's just found a secret stash of corn or tasty morsels. It's a well tried and tested ruse used by most cockerels to attract curious hens and for some bizarre reason it seems to work with alarming frequency. However, while it works for Horatio the other Scots Dumpys are none too impressed by Frank's persistent antics and, as a result, when they see him coming they give him the cold shoulder, or the hen equivalent.

 I've shot two little video here so you can bear witness to Frank's antics. Last month his focus was purely on the white hen Thumberlina but now he has extended his repartee to the others and they're just not interested, as you can see from the clip on the right.
 In my second video, below,
you can see and hear him rutting around to attract everyone's attention, but the hens are singularly unimpressed by his performance.
 Despite being semi wild, poor Frank has now taken to stalking the feathered females inside and around their hen pen. Horatio has avoided confontation so far but I can see trouble down the line if Frank continues to stalk the Dumpys.
                                                                                 
It's such a shame we can't find him a female companion as his scarlet face mask looks quite stunning and while I'm sure he'd rock a few boats in the pheasant world he's simply not cutting the mustard as far as the hens are concerned.
 He-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is reckons there's only one solution; he thinks we should eat Frank! Of course that's his solution to most problems: let's eat it before the fox does.
 However dear readers, I promise here and now that whatever fate has in store for our white cock pheasant it won't be as a table bird.
 My response to hubby was not dissimilar to the final line of the classic 1939 film Gone With The Wind as Clark Gable turns to Vivien Leigh and says: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

STRING UP LITTER LOUTS

.. Or, more countryside trials

FARMERS have a reputation for being grumpy old gits and I think I'm morphing in to one!
 As I become more immersed into matters countryside, I am increasingly looking down with scorn and disdain on "the townies" and beginning to realise just how frustrating they can be.
 There is a wee bit of hypocrisy here, I know, because having spent 15 years living in Soho I probably epitomised a typical city dweller ... the slightest whiff of a rural smell would send me scurrying for a canned spray of 'fresh countryside air' (oh the irony!)

HOW LONG is this piece of string? Hard to tell since it's knotted

and looped firmly around the legs of the peahen

 I remember sneering when 400,000 country folk marched through central London in September 2002 to highlight the needs of rural communities and express outrage over the proposed ban on fox hunting with dogs in England and Wales.
 Now, having experienced and witnessed firsthand the devastation the fox can cause in rural communities, I'd be putting on my wellies, jeans and Barbour jacket to join them.
 I now realise the importance of closing gates, driving slowly around countryside lanes especially during the lambing season, waiting patiently as sheep are herded down a road while being transferred from one field to another and picking up litter as I go out for a stroll.
 There's nothing more infuriating than finding an empty pop can that someone's thrown away ... apart from a sheep finding it first and cutting its foot. And so, when I saw one of my peahens limping a few days back I spewed out a load of curse words.

IN DISTRESS: Unhappy peahen grabbed after flailing around

on the ground, helpless

 The poor bird had somehow managed to get both her feet tied in a knot of carelessly discarded orange string. From where it came I don't know but it wasn't from the bales of hay and straw I use. I always make a point of giving twine like that to my elderly neighbour who is a keen gardener and he recycles such things for his vegetable patch when tying back plants.
 The peahen spent most of the day sitting, perched on the roof while I spent most of the day waiting for her to come down. I could see she was becoming increasingly distressed and I knew if I couldn't catch her then she would fall prey to a fox.
 By dusk all of the peafowl head towards one of the tallest trees on the land and there they perch high up out of the way of any predator, so I knew I had to catch her while it was still daylight. As it happened, shortly before dusk I found her flapping helpessly on the ground near the trees and was able to throw my jacket over her and take her into the kitchen.
 She struggled and made an awful honking sound which set off the other peafowl who responded to the distress call in similar fashion. While I held her wings down she started to use her beak to lash out as I think she thought her time was up.

PEAHEN cautiously watches me watching

her watching me, after string drama

GINGERLY stepping out 24 hours after 

stepping in to some discarded string

 Painstakingly, using a pair of scissors, I managed to cut away the string which had caused flesh wounds at the top of her legs and took her back outside where she shrieked and flew up in to the tree to join her seven comrades.
 Today she seemed none the worse for her experience but kept a safe distance from me as I threw out some bird seed. If I could get my hands on the idiot who tossed away that string without a second thought I would probably be making garters now out of his guts.