Daydream thread continues.....

Davesnave

lostinrates wrote: »

Height not so much the issue, they will wriggle underneath anything the can i find. Ours have flown a couple of times, but barely, and only in high dudgeon. Most of thke time they hate to even step over something.

I meant height to keep the foxes out. In the garden area, not such an issue, but in the far orchard, where they'd be most useful, there might be a risk.

Or do you think they'd cope?

lostinrates

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Davesnave.. we paid for the van yesturday:eek: it was def the wrong timme to go.. rent, vat, bills etc... BUT.... we have had the van 4 years, ( she is a 54 plate) and flip has she been used and abused.... a total cart horse of a van.... we also have another Iveco long wheel base van too, we had only just put a new mot on her, plus the tax is due in a few days:o, we just thought better the devil you know, as we could have bought another van and have loads of things go wrong with it...

Alfie.... thanks, so my little brood at mo are brill, so flipping funny....one or two of them are just starting to hiss and honk:D especially when the cat sits in the run..


LIR we have loads of hazelnut/cob trees in our place, ( and loads of blooody squireels too) I could take a pic when they have their nuts for you to see, and i could see if we could dig one up. I presume the best time for that would be winter?

Def up for a meet up in Bristol... depending on the date..:T

Wow, that would be great, but.....don't you want them?

We don't have any squirrels yet. My guess is nuts might cal
L them like sirens though!

Davesnave

lostinrates wrote: »

We don't have any squirrels yet. My guess is nuts might cal
L them like sirens though!

Wild hazels aren't quite the same as Kentish Cob types. We have the latter in the garden and they seem a bit fussier, or maybe I haven't got the hang of maintaining them yet. I reduced the number of stems last winter, taking out the older ones, but they seem to have gone leggy now. I will have to reduce them a bit.

No squirrels in our garden either. Too big a treeless gap between it and their normal haunts.

lostinrates

Davesnave wrote: »

I meant height to keep the foxes out. In the garden area, not such an issue, but in the far orchard, where they'd be most useful, there might be a risk.

Or do you think they'd cope?

Well......i don.t know. Most people don't try and fence foxes out i guess, apart from chickens. If you lock them away securely at night they run the same chances as free range chooks i guess.

Davesnave

lostinrates wrote: »

Well......i don.t know. Most people don't try and fence foxes out i guess, apart from chickens. If you lock them away securely at night they run the same chances as free range chooks i guess.

They look like they are using them as free-range 'security' at a pheasant-rearing place near here, but that's a big flock. I suppose we'd only need half a dozen.

Well, it would be worth giving it a go. Just had a quote for a pair of new agri mower tyres = £80. I'm sticking a tube in the punctured one for now....:(

Itismehonest

Kentish Cob/Filberts love chalky ground (unsurprisingly, if you think of Kent). I haven't tried growing them over here so I don't know how successful they would be, Dave. They can reach 10m tall so leggy is probably part of their nature.
They are a magnet for squirrels, mice & more weirdly, hedgehogs. So I'd try to keep them as far away as possible from anything else the vermin may be interested in
The ordinary hazels grow a few hundred feet away down in the valley so the Cobs would probably be OK, too.

I've known people who used geese as guard dogs. They do kick up a racket if there's anything 'foreign' around (can include human visitors, too) if they are that way inclined.

Murky here but not the mist/fog we had yesterday.

lostinrates

The thing with geese guarding is that they do make a fuss about almost anything! I love the noise, but if i went to check each time they started honkig i would never be in the house!

Itismehonest

lostinrates wrote: »

The thing with geese guarding is that they do make a fuss about almost anything! I love the noise, but if i went to check each time they started honkig i would never be in the house!

Yes, that was what I was getting at, LIR, plus the fact that totally free-ranging geese can also put off some people you do want to visit.
I've known people stand at my uncle's gate & yell for him to round up the hissing, honking group of birds on the other side :rotfl:

Although I laugh, I've also known it make kids very nervous of geese & some have never grown out of the fear.
It's one of the reasons why we didn't have geese because we had holidaymakers with young children around.
Having said that, some of our Aylesbury ducks were so large that even farmers looked twice because they thought they were geese. The ducks had a completely different 'attitude' though.

Davesnave

OK, here are the 3 babies + surrogate Mum:



No more hatching, by the look of things, but this lot are fine and eating well.

lostinrates

What a caring mum, i love her!