Cleaning & Tidying

 The chicks are doing really well and first job of the day is to check that they are OK before refreshing the newspaper lining of the brooder and ensuring they have clean water* and plenty of chick crumb.

After cleaning the chicks' brooder, I attended to the cleaning and sterilisation of the incubator. This was timely as 30% has arranged to collect a batch of Crested Cream Legbar eggs tomorrow morning.  I was amazed at how grubby the incubator was considering the chicks were only in it for less than sixty hours. Every surface was covered with a fine dusting of down and the base was littered with shell fragments and chick faeces. 

As I washed and sterilised the components my thoughts turned to an acquaintance of ours, who is an incubation addict.  She will set batch after batch of eggs without ever cleaning her incubators. I often wonder what her hatch rates are and whether her chicks are impacted by being hatched in such an environment?**

Cleaning and reassembling the incubator took most of the morning and the afternoon was fairly leisurely. 30% and I cleared a small, shallow border alongside one of the outbuildings. Until this afternoon it was planted with a scruffy rose that refused to flower, a poorly fruiting raspberry and several Stinking Iris plants.

Our plan is to plant a couple of Lupins in the bed, but, having cleared it, I wonder whether Lavender might be better suited.  The bed has very shallow soil and is also very dry.

Whatever we plant there, it will need a lot of care and attention until it is established and possibly beyond.

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* The chicks may be precocious, meaning that they require no parental care, but this precociousness seems to be combined with an innate ability to crap in any food or water container less that five minutes after it has been refreshed.

** Mind You, it can get pretty rank under a broody hen! That is definitely NOT a sterile environment and naturally hatched chicks seem to do OK.