It's that time of year again!

Broody chickens all over the place. The 2 mummies that I had sitting on eggs hatched them yesterday and last night. Maude only hatched 2 - one of her 4 eggs broke and was infertile and she threw one out of the nest 2 days ago. It was fertile so I don't know why she did it. Her 2 babies are one black with white wing tips and one brown striped one.
Mabel has hatched 3 tiny black chicks, all with white wing tips.
George is dad to them all and it was a mixture of eggs. I didn't even know if they were fertile so it's nice to get some chicks. I have a buyer for them already!
(But I know I'll hate to see them go!)

So, the mums and babies are taking up my two broody houses and today I've got 2 more broodies in the big house. It's a bit of a pest really as I have nowhere to put them to either break their broodiness or let them sit safely without the other chickens wanting to lay and eggs getting pushed out of nesting boxes - already this morning there was one broken egg.

This problem has led me to fork out for yet another small chicken house which we will only use as a 'breaking broody' house!!
We got this one - which in actual fact, we'll use as a proper house and use one of the older smaller ones as the breaking broody house!

And here are the new babies.. this one is very pretty!

This wee one looks a bit dusty!  It was lounging around in the food bowl!

Feels like Summer

The weather has been lovely for a few weeks now, but it's only in the last few days the heat has really kicked in and it feels like summer. It's not...yet, but the lush spring green is fading fast as we've had no rain for over three weeks, and with the heat, a few breezy days and the blue skies it doesn't take long for the ground to dry out. We're luckier than most as we have an irrigation system for the veggie garden and the farm has lots of water.

Some of the animals are really relishing the heat, though. Here's Pango having a snooze.

 

 I chased this bee all around the chive flowers! It was having none of my nonsense and made absolutely no effort to stay still, at all. He was far too busy.

 Tonight is home made pizza night, we're firing up the pizza oven and we've got some lovely Mahoe mozzarella and basil to top them with. Bliss.