V8 Leaves the party

It’s been a hard May for us, losing Crispy and Turbo… but then we rescued some new girls and the flock increased to 12…

… for 24 hours.

V8, healthy yesterday, has been taken by egg peritonitis.

This, from PoultryKeeper.com

Egg Peritonitis is when the peritoneum (the lining of the abdomen) becomes inflamed due to an infection from bacteria. Peritonitis can occur after prolapse or when yolk goes into the abdominal cavity, instead of going down the oviduct and out in the normal way.

The yolk should go into the ‘ovarian pocket’ (the space surrounding the ovary). This often occurs after some viral diseases like Infective Bronchitis where the disease damages the reproductive tract. A ruptured intestine can also cause this problem.

Diagnosis and Treatment.

Sometimes a ‘Penguin Stance’ can indicate an egg bound hen or peritonitis but more often than not they don’t show this and may just be swollen around the abdomen and it is often hard to diagnose this problem whilst the bird is alive. The bird can have a blue comb, and diarrhoea but no book seems to believe these are conclusive and can also indicate many other problems. A post mortem on birds will show an inflamed abdomen and there will be a very putrid smell with yolk. Some birds have been treated with antibiotics and had the fluid drawn off but the chances of success are slim and you can often have a big bill at the end of this. It is usually better to have the bird put to sleep.

All a man made problem – It’s the trouble with how they’ve been bred into egg machines. If the already dodgy internals go wrong, the blockage is often quick & serious, as they have no recovery time before the next egg follows on. Okay, it’s a bit more complicated then that, but you get the picture.

Chris was saying the other day how all other birds lay seasonally (otherwise you’d forever see ducklings at a pond etc). Chickens have been manipulated to lay daily. That’s like running a car engine on the red-line…. all of the time.

Some battery farms artificially control the light so instead of a 24hr day, the hens have an 18hr day (e.g).

This year has been pretty crap for the girls. You get used to it because, well, it’s how they are. They are so characterful & individual though, it’s obvious when one goes.

Best we can do is give them a happy retirement!

Any day spent in freedom, is a better day for these girls.

Henvasion!

Two years ago we took in some rescued ex-battery hens. We took in 4, as that seemed a good number. You have to get a minimum of 3 so they have company, and if introducing them to an established flock you need a few to help the introduction go smoothly, or the new (scrawny) hens will get picked on….

Rescued hens awaiting new owners.

When we lost our first hen, we thought it seemed a bit too quiet with just 3. We decided to take on 3 more to make it up to 6. The reasoning being that if we lost 3, we would still have 3, and we could get another 3…. 6 as a number worked really well.

It’s really rewarding looking after rescue hens. Just seeing them become fitter, healthier and friendlier is wonderful… and of course there are the benefits of the eggs…. Gloriously bright & tasty yellow yolks, like nothing you’ll get in the supermarket.

In fact recently we had to buy some free range eggs from Sainsburys supermarket (we needed some for a cake, and had run out). They were top of the range supermarket free range eggs… the best they had to offer…. and in comparison to the ones our hens are laying, even the best supermarket eggs lacked colour and flavour.

Anyway… We lost one, so dropped down to 5. Then a friend said he had 3 hens that he wanted to pass on, as his wife wasn’t too keen on them. I figured that 8 wasn’t too much of a step up from the 6 we’d had.

So…. his 3 joined our remaining 5, and up until early 2012 we had the 8 hens….

And then we lost two due to old age & complications. We were back to 6.

Early this year, T2 bowed out…

…and so did Mel.

Ex-batts can have quite short lives.

This is due to their breeding, and what they have been through.

Then last week another took a turn for the worse and passed away. We were back to 5, so we put our name down for 5 new rescue hens to make the number back up to 10…. yes, not 8… Well, the garden looked so empty without a good sized flock…

And then in the same week, before we had picked up the new girls, another of our old girls passed away… We were down to 4….

I quickly changed our order to 6 new rescue hens. We still wanted 10… 10 was enough. A good number. No more though.

Today we went to pick them up…. and the lady in charge had managed to rescue 100 extra hens and was offering to up people’s orders…

… which is why I drove home in the old Land Rover with 8 new rescue hens…. These ones were ex-free range, so in better health to start with.

Hang on… we’ve got neighbours…

The 8 lucky ladies

Cluck?

Hulahoop, Sonic, Lotus, Pingu,

Charger, Porsche, Phantom and Knickers

joined V8, 22, Ginger and Bunty.

That’s it… 12. No more.

They have good sleeping quarters, as Cluckingham Palace has two wings, each easily sleeping 6 birds – and 4 nest boxes.

Cluckingham Palace is full.

More photo’s of the 8 new ladies here.

Chris has more hen & animal related stuff over at Crispy Snippets.

If you want to look into ex-batt and ex-free rescue, then get in contact with the British Hen Welfare Trust. (Website or Facebook)

If you want a good start in getting a hen-house – or extending what you have – then contact Hen House World and tell them I send you! They are really helpful, and if you don’t mind damaged/returned parts, they can do a real good deal if you’re handy with the tools (It’s how I made Cluckingham Palace).

Cluckingham Palace

Welcome to the New Renaissance

Apparently my son (6) spent lunch time alone, again, laying in the grass at school, looking at the sky, whilst the other kids played.

In other news… not possibly related… he is the only openly non-religious kid there, and they all think he’s wrong.

Nice way to teach tolerance.

I touched on it HERE over at God and Son.

On the plus side, he knows how clouds form, where as the other kids think they are like cotton wool.

Go figure… the religious ones believe in cotton wool clouds, but my non-believing son is all about the science…

He asked me – “They all say they are Christians, but that’s all made up stories. If they are Christians, then what am I?“

I’m sure some of the others just ‘believe‘ to stay in with the crowd, and some just say it because, well… everyone else is saying it.

Regardless of what you might think, I have always tried to keep religion out of his life until he is old enough to make his own mind up. If he has asked a question, I have always tried to be neutral & promote understanding of people’s beliefs, and to be tolerant.

I answered in form of a question – “Do you believe that there is a God?”

He replied – “Pffft, no!”

I asked – “Are you sure?”

He replied – “It’s just stories. He’s not real, I already SAID that!”

I said – “Then you are like me. You are an Atheist.”

He looked at me, grimaced and said – “Atheist people don’t believe in God, do they?”

I told him -  “No, they do not.”

I told him that as he grows up, he’ll meet a lot of people who believe in God or Gods, and he’ll meet a lot of people who don’t. I told him that I am happy for him to believe what he wants, and that other people are allowed to believe what they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.

He seemed much happy to be a thing, and not just not being a Christian.

He smiled, gave me a hug and then went back to reading his book on racing Mini Coopers.

Welcome to the new Renaissance lad.

It's #Towelday

Reblogged from God and Son:

As today is Towel Day…

… and a special one at that, as Ms Emily Anarchy pointed out… 25th May 2012 = 25 5 12 25 + 5 + 12 = 42

In remembrance of Douglas Adams.

*Douglas Adams. The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. New York: Random House, 2002, 135–136. Also quoted by Richard Dawkins in his Eulogy for Douglas Adams (17 September 2001)

It's a particularly special, one time ever, #Towelday today.

Exit Crispy, Stage Left

Crispy the Hen went today. Dammit…

She was healthy looking, but prone to quiet spells. She had stopped laying a while back – She was the oldest of the girls.

She was a bit quieter today, and retaining fluid (Chris put this down to egg peritonitis – very basically: not laying, but still producing the protein).

Chris took her to the vets to get her checked out & fluids drained.

X-Ray showed that our plump bird had a large mass in her.

As she was drained she passed away.

The vet offered to find out what it was, and Chris said that it would be fine – if she could watch.

The vet (Fred McKenzie) from Farnborough’s Pets at Home – Companion Care was very interested to find out, as they don’t often deal with chickens. Chris watched on, equally interested.

Sure Crispy was a pet – but Crispy the clucking, squawking hen had ceased to be a pet the moment she passed away, now Crispy the pet was a memory, and the vet could learn from her to potentially help others.

The vet was excellent. After dissecting her, he found that the large amount of protein due the peritonitis meant that a certain cellular disease had a wonderful playground. Excuse my language, but ‘fuck you, cancer‘.

He even phoned later, after Chris had returned home, to say he had looked further in to it. He talked with Chris and confirmed the previous discussed diagnosis, and the dissection, was confirmed by his post-op research.

Crispy – Ruler of the Garden

Once more, as with the others, she was happy right up until the end.

No pain, no suffering.

;

Goodbye, Turbo Chicken

Turbo Chicken is no more.

She may as well have been called Superleggera, for she was fast and light. It was her slightness that didn’t help in the end.

Although stable and happy, she just couldn’t recover from her recent weakened condition.

We took the decision to have her put down before she started suffering any further.

Compared to most ex-battery hens, her last days did not include being flung in a shredder, but sat in front of the TV on a comfy armchair, being fed good food, watching The Fantastic Four – Rise of the Silver Surfer (good reactions from her), and James Bond – The World is not Enough (she wasn’t too impressed).

I’ve been expecting you, Mr Bond…

Turbo Chicken has lag

Turbo the ex-battery hen has always been skinny. This meant a recent case of sour crop really knocked her out. I managed to empty her crop (I hope to never smell anything like that again) and she seemed to pick up a bit. Hopefully a nights sleep would help her.

Next morning she was found on her side, unable to move. I mixed up some sugar water and slowly during the day she picked up some energy.

She’s eaten some solid food now, but she’s still weak.

Best still, she pooped…. which means she has stuff passing through her crop again…. YAY!… but boy did that also stink!

She’ll go one of two ways, but she’s comfortable & has enjoyed two years of freedom since we rescued her from battery farm hell.

The Fry Effect

Thanks to Kate Smurthwaite and Stephen Fry, my new blog (God and Son) has had a very good first couple of weeks.

Today was spectacular, thanks to ‘The Fry Effect‘… A  single retweet by Stephen Fry and God & Son went ballistic… Within a couple of minutes over 2,500 people had visited the blog…. This quieted down to about 1 hit a second for the next 3 hours….

I don’t expect to keep up such incredible numbers, but the initial publicity is fantastic!

This is the link he re-tweeted: http://wp.me/p2mtvw-2N (Pop Goes Your Head)

And this is the effect after 3 hours….

During typing this blog entry, another 1000 hits have taken place….

Crazy….

I figure (and this works quite well on ‘celebs’…)

• 25% of a Twitterers followers are active (the rest just add them as a friend and don’t really interact).
• 1% of them would click a link the Tweeter posts.
• 1% of them will be repeat site visitors.
• This worked out pretty accurate when Wossy re-tweeted my Twitter Guide.

So.. for Mr Fry:

Over 4,200,000 followers… my theory says 1,050,000 active…. so 10,500 people will click the link and 105 will be repeat visitors.
So far, 14,000 people have hit my site today, so I’m a little out, but that is down to how many ‘ripple effect‘ re-tweets.

The ‘ripple effect‘ re-tweets work out just the same as the initial re-tweeting. Someone re-tweets the initial re-tweet…. Fry re-tweets me, someone re-tweets Fry…. someone re-tweets the person who re-tweeted Fry… etc

The percentage breakdown of those ripple tweeters followers now add to the hits my site gets… which explains the additional 4,000 hits above the theorised 10,000 initial hits from Stephen Fry.

At 10,000 hits I did notice a drop in hits per minute…. from 75 per minute to 50 per minute… which would suggest the initial Fry effect was now being passed over to the effect that HIS re-tweeters were giving me.

It all works out somehow….

Anyway, as a rule of thumb, it’s not too bad…

Heavyweight Smurthwaite

Reblogged from God and Son:

• 

Kate blogs about the incident HERE.

Kate Smurthwaite is a stand-up comic and political activist.

Follow her on Twitter or her BLOG, or visit her YouTube channel.

NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY SITE

BBC – The Big Questions

After seeing Kate Smurthwaite shut down one of her counterparts in a religious debate (she was representing the National Secular Society), I came up with this new image. Before posting it, I sent it to her to see if she was okay with it. She replied saying that she loved it - and that she had also sent it to Nicky Campbell (the show host). I highly recommend looking her up.

Hey! Preacher, Leave those Kids Alone

Reblogged from God and Son:

School is for learning proven facts. Core studies, maths, language, geography, health & fitness, logic & understanding…. and doubly so during the early years at infant school.

So it makes me angry that religion… a faith based subject, is taught to kids who do not understand the principal of faith.

Kids who play games of pretend, who think the Easter Bunny is real and get upset when a cartoon character gets an ouchie, are being taught that the figures in religion are real….

Read more… 182 more words

Re-blogged from my God & Son website... If you find offence in religious humour or commentary, then back away now. I'm not forcing you to look, so don't go going all preachy on me. Respect. Peace Out.