Mud, Mud,

There's nothing quite like it………  well I don't know about cooling the blood like in the old song, but it makes my blood boil!!!!  I think the muddy runs are worse this year than they were last year!  We keep swapping the amberlinks over from one to the other, but they don't get a chance to dry out!  And they are too big to cover.  I've got 3 bits of run that are covered, but nto big enough for all the chickens.

Hubby kept the turkeys in for 2 days as their run was so boggy,but yesterday we covered half of it in straw, but after just 1 day this is what it looks like!!

Sorry its a bit dark!  But it was very dark and miserable here at 7.45 this morning!

Hubby put another bale of straw down just after I took this photo too!

And he found another dead turkey in the house when he let the others out this morning.  I don't know why they fight and peck each other!

They are worse when they are outside too!  When he shut them up for 2 days, they were quiet and no one got hurt, but let them out again and this is what happens!  It's horrible.  I weighed the dead one and it weighed just on 16lbs, so by christmas that would have been a big one worth £50!!!  But I phoned our new acquaintances who have the Harris Hawk and Trevor came down to pick it up.  He must now have the best fed Hawk in lincolnshire!!!  Still, it wasn't completely wasted was it?

I've got orders for about 20 of our turkeys so far, and 2 of them are paid for!  So I'm quite pleased with that!  I just hope we get more sold, otherwise we'll be eating turkey for the next 2 years!!!! lol  I'm going down to Kent at the end of the month for my granddaughters 18th, and a friend from the lottie site wants a turkey for thanksgiving and she lives in London, so I'm taking one down with me and 2 frozen chickens too, so we will know how the turkeys taste before christmas!!!!

The Amberlinks are now 21 weeks old and several of them are laying now, we are getting 4 a day here, plus several that other people have bought are emailing me updates, so that's god.  I've sold about 200 so far, so still quite a few here, but both amberlink cockerels have now gone to new homes as hubby couldn't be bothered to put them in the pot, but that's given them a new lease of life!  There's just Rocky the rooster here now, and if anyone would like a light sussex cross cockerel, please get in touch!

The meat chicks are 6 weeks old, but I lost one of them the other day.  I didn't notice any injuries on it and hadn't noticed any of them being ill, so perhpas it just had a heart attack or something.  Poor thing.  But the others are fine, even the ones that can't walk very well are getting bigger now they are in teh brooder on their own and don't have other chicks walking all over them!

Here they are enjoying a dust bath in their clean shavings!

Going back to the turkeys for a minute, we bought some electric fencing to keep them in their run, but hubby won't get a battery for it as he says they are too expensive, but now the leaves are faling off the trees, the turkeys keep flying over the fence trying to catcht he leaves as they fall!!!!  So talk about false economy!  I had to go outide 3 times this morning alone to get the escapees back into the run!!! lol

I wish I could let the turkeys run in the polytunnel, but there are enough holes in the plastic now where the chickens were in there last winter.  With the turkeys, I'd have no plastic left after a few days!!!!  But at least it would be dry in there!!