But anyway, apologies John and Colin!!!!  I will try to do better!  Funny that used to appear on my school reports a lot "Could do better!!" lol

Since I posted in January, I have had the worst case of gastro-enteritis ever!  it lasted for over 2 weeks!  During the first week, all I ate was a bit of toast a day for some of the days, but nothing but water or flat lemonade for the whole weeks.  I lost 12lbs in weight, which was good, but I wouldn't recommend it as a dietary aid!!

I had started watching my eating the previous week.  I won't say its a diet, as it's not, and we don't eat much of the wrong things, just too much of the right ones!  So I lost 6lbs the first week, then the 12lbs, but since I started eating again I think I've lost my impetus, and I haven't lost anything since, but at least it hasn't gone back on!  But I'm trying to get into the mood again.

We still have some turkeys running around, thanks to you know who, but we are gradually getting them dispatched, jointed and frozen.  They are useful for bartering!  A young friend helps us with plucking, and he gets paid i oven ready chickens or turkey!  And I'm swapping one for a TFT monitor from another good friend!!  We are still dispatching the meat chickens too.

The 10 Amberlinks i kept from my last little flock are now fully integrated in with the older Amberlinks and Goldlines.  We did have one or 2 little squabbles, and for a few nights, I had to shoo the new girls into the new home as from their new run, they can see their old house, and they were running up and down the fence trying to gt back in there!

But I couldn't do that, as the 8 week old Babcocks are in there now.  Because the last Amberlinks to be sold had to wait until my customer could get down here, the Babcocks had to stay in the brooder shed 2 weeks longer than usual, and they got too overcrowded, so on the morning after I'd got the shed ready for them, I went to get them out of the brooder, and I'd lost 6 of them where they'd crowded on top of each other to sleep, plus they were getting bored, and had started pecking each other.  I had about 4 that I had to cover in my Vaseline mixture.  Yesterday I found another 2 that were being pecked. One is a tiny chick that is half the size f the others, and she looks so bald, There are no feathers on her back, and the feathers from the top of her wings have gone, possibly due to being pecked off, but there was only a tiny bit of blood.

But the other chick was quite badly pecked on her right wing and it was bleeding a lot, so I cleaned her up, put loads of vaseline mix on her wing and brought her indoors where she is happily scratching around in our old cat carrier.  I don't like bringing them indoors as I used to, as it can be difficult when they go back in with the others, but I couldn't leave her in that state, the others would have killed her by now.  but when she is ready, I'll take her back down to the big house when I put the others away at night, hopefully they won't notice she's been missing!!

The Babcocks are 8 weeks old now,   We've already sold 6, and one of my customers who already has 65 of our Amberlinks wants another 50-100 when they are ready, and I've got orders for another 27, so there won't be many left to sell in April, so if you are interested, please let me know.  After this flock of Babcock's has gone, we are going to give the runs a rest for a few months before getting more chicks.

I want to have a re-think about the houses and runs, but the big henhouse is now 34ft x 6ft long and has a concrete floor, so we can't really move it, but maybe we can re-arrange the popholes and runs so that at least they have 2 runs, a smaller one for the winter, and a bigger one for the spring and summer hopefully with some grass that will last more than a day or 2!!

We've got builders and electricians here at the moment, doing some necessary work, like getting the central heating running again.  We've had no hot water for nearly a year, no central heating either!  But we are lucky that we have the woodburner in the lounge.  Mind you,  when you go upstairs to bed, it's freezing!!!!!  I get tempted some nights to stay downstairs and sleep on the sofa bed in the warm!!!! lol

I've got my old Pc plugged in downstairs at the moment, as we had to have all the floorboards up upstairs and I had to empty my 'study' !  But its nice having a PC down here in the warm!  But I can't get my photo's on this one at the moment, so you'll have to wait for updates until I gt my newer PC back in action next week!!!

Well, I can't think of anything else to talk about at the moment, so I'll say bye for now, and I'll try not to be so long next time, but if I do, please feel free to slap wrists again!