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A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 37 trips to carry that many people.

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Meet Blue.
We got Blue from the Brighton retired greyhound trust in June 2006. His racing name is effingham blue & he was born on the 13 august 2001

Background:
We needed a dog…I had actually made an appointment to meet a different dog after looking on the BRGT website but they gave us a time to come up and said bring the boys too so off to the kennels with t in his wheelchair we went and were taken to meet the hounds!
We soon found out that the one we were thinking of was very cute but way too bouncy and not good with the wheelchair.
One of the kennel hands recommended blue, I fell in love when I first saw him, a small blue boy with snowflake markings who obviously liked peace & quiet. He came for a walk with us & although a bit shy, he was really good with t. He was very unsure of the wheelchair but at least he didn’t go bonkers at the sight of it!
Blue had been a very good open racer, winning a lot of his races but was retired due to injury.
Blue was reserved pending a home visit by Jenny, the trustee. Jenny came out & made sure we had a nice safe environment with a well fenced off garden & then we were clear to arrange an adoption date & make the discretionary donation. I made a donation of £100 as I wasn’t sure what was reasonable but thought it would be enough to enable the BRGT to continue their good work.
Now:
So, 5 years on and my beautiful blue boy is 10! Still gorgeous but now has man boobs.
He met a young greyhound girl in the park recently and she brought his ‘puppyness’ out!
We decided to get him a girlfriend and you’ll meet her properly in the next post

He even likes chickens!

Soon be at home missy xxx

I love going for a drive into the countryside with my children, watching the sheep graze and cows happily loafing about in fields. We don’t see many fields of chickens sadly, mainly due to most chickens being commercially kept in barns & battery conditions. To the majority of us, the practice of battery farming chickens is abhorrent but what if this became the case with cows?

The possibility of mega dairies getting the go ahead here is a scary prospect. I don’t want that, I don’t want milk in my tea that has come from ‘battery’ cows.

I want to see cows in fields doing what cows do best, roaming the countryside with the chance to feel the wind rustle against their faces, warm sunshine on their backs and rain against their skins

Imagine fields without cows …. instead there are factories full of cows. Cows with no access to grass, no exercise, no sunlight.

Would you drink factory milk from ‘battery’ cows?
Would you even know the milk in your cuppa is from ‘battery’ cows?

We need to stop mega dairies from becoming a reality. Join Molly the cow to stop mega dairies

Factory milk with that? Not in my cuppa!

If like me, you think cows belong in fields not factories visit www.notinmycuppa.com

So far I have 2 definite doodlers, a lavender frizzle and a black frizzle. Time will tell if any more decide to show their true colours off. Basically you look for a big comb with wattles, and two have wattles already! Girls tend not to develop their head gear as quick. Boys will also attempt to doodle around the 9 to 12 weeks stage

In an attempt at feather sexing at a day old I figured 5 boys and 6 girls but I’ve found from past experience it’s not been a particularly reliable science as far as pekins are concerned

I shall leave you with pictures of the 11 chicks at 3 weeks old

pipped egg

This little chick had pipped 2 days early!
At first I was excited but I then had a mild panic as it was now bedtime and I hadn’t got anything ready. The brooder wasn’t clean in fact it was still full of toys ( yes its a plastic toybox), I hadn’t sterilised the drinker or cleaned and disinfected the electric hens.I had bought the chick crumb so at least they could eat. Luckily the chicks stay in the incubator for approximately 24 hours before needing to go in a brooder so I had the following day to get it all ready. Because the chicks pip was quite big, I expected it would hatch overnight, so I set up the CCTV.

Its a wired system but so easy to use, in the morning when I switched the tv on I was greeted by not one, but two little chicks!

Two early chicks! both my pekins one lavender and one black. the rest followed in fairly quick succession over that and the following day.

little black pekin chick on its way out below

while all this was going on I got the brooder all set up and once the chicks were fluffy and dry they moved into the brooder, which meant the just hatched ones could rest.

Unfortunately the last egg containing a lemon cuckoo chick from chickenstreet was bashed about by the others. The shell was broken, breaking blood vessels in the membrane and the chick inside died.

These are the 11 that did hatch, pictures taken on their way to the brooder, approx 24 hrs old.

They are the loveliest little things, the sablepoots ( one is pictured with a penny) are tiny!
Their feathers started coming through really quickly! I think 7 or 8 of my 9 pekins are frizzled

They are growing up beautifully and are a week old now

I started running my incubator yesterday to make sure all was well with it, it’s currently situated in the attic as that has a stable temperature and I can brood them up there too.
This will be my second hatch with the Rcom. I used the universal tray that came with it last time (sort of adjustable columns to pop eggs in )and I’m not convinced it turned all of the 12 eggs particularly well. With that in mind I invested in the 20 egg tray which has a cut out for each egg evenly spaced and I’m hoping this will do the job a lot better.
I like the fact that this incubator is fairly simple to use it needs minimal fiddling with. Aside from candling eggs at day 6 and 14 all you really need to do is you fill the reservoir and check it’s topped up every 3 days, set the humidity (45) and temp (37.5), set the ‘turning’ to ‘on’ and you are good to go!
18 days later up the humidity to 65 and set ‘turning’ to ‘off’ then wait for the baby chicks to hatch
The eggs above are from my pekins 5 from flower x Alice and 2 are frizz x Alice. Tomorrow I shall pop some more eggs in from the lovely Andy at Chickenstreet
I shall post candling results hopefully with pictures if embryo’s are clear enough to see.
Fingers crossed for a happy hatch

yep, that would be the dogs food

next the hub bought me 2 pekins, flower & Dave.

Then I got 3 bantam Plymouth rocks.

I hatched tikka and nugget from my own stock. Then hatched frizz a mottled pekin.

I bought a box of pekin cockerels (they were supposed to be girls) from ardingly, frizzles noodles, Alice and two smooth reds.

Next hatch was pekins spot and Sally.

A few weeks after them I upgraded the incubator and I hatched Dobby a bantam orp & pekins Hattie,jelly,tallulah & moony.

I was also given two pretty little lemon pyle brahma girls

There have been downsides, Dave & 2 of the rocks died
And some of the others went to fab homes.

I currently I have 10 hens and 3 doodlers can never get them all in 1 pic together…

Thats todays gratuitous chicken blog mainly just to say there is more to chickens than eggs, KFC, yorkshire puddings and gravy! they make fab pets and are great little characters to have bimbling around the garden (or the living room)

DISCLAIMER: having got them a new massive shed I can AND will do one more hatch

oh and one final piece of advice, dont leave the dishwasher door open. found a chicken in mine picking out bits of sweetcorn…