Daydream thread... without the rose-tinted specs

Davesnave

I_have_spoken wrote: »

I have ended up with hideous colour combination of scarlet rhododendron , self-seeded orange berberis and mauve bergenia beside each other. Vile!

I have only two words to say to that.... Christopher Lloyd!

Congrats on the incubator win, Alex. :beer:

Lovely wee gosling rozee. :T

Poorly cat is slipping away. She's done a tour of her territory today and now just wants to lie down.She seems to be seeing (badly) from only one eye and she's pretty deaf anyway. No pain though, as far as we can tell.

Oh, and the hens have lice.....:(

COOLTRIKERCHICK

sorry to hear she is still not looking good... its so hard.. are you and mrs Davesnave ok ?


LIR... how is big dog tonight?


sadly I had to dispatch another 2 baby quail, they were the ones that hatched out the day after the other ones.. so next time any ones that hatch out the day after the main hatch, I will keep them separate to see if that will make a difference.


but I was warned there is a high mortality rate with very young quails...


transplanted/potted on my cabbage seedlings, they had gone a bit leggy, also potted on my courgettes...

lostinrates

Catch, big dog is not in Immeadiate danger, poor Dave's cat. but its that watch and wait stage....

choille

Dave - sorry about your cat. Our remaining elderly tom is also fading & perking up a little. He doesn't really go out now. He seems quite happy,but I watch him sometimes & wonder if he's asleep or should I give him a poke to check......................................

Gorgeous day here - really got a heat in the day & just gawped at the hills & didn't do too much apart from ring some lambs...............

My garden is a reet mess, a weedy, overgrown embarassment...again. But I can't do everything & sometimes it's nice just to stand and stare

Davesnave

Thanks for all your thoughts about our cat. :A

Mrs DS and I aren't very troubled when pets die of old age/natural causes. We know they've had a good life. We had a couple of cats die young from incurable problems, probably with them from birth, and that was much harder.

We'll visit the vet today.

Alexelisey

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Alex, have you incubated eggs before? have you got a brooder etc?

what size is the rabbit hutch??

personally if you haven't incubated chickens before, I wouldn't start with quails eggs, I had to dispatch one today... it was smaller than the other chicks, and they were just picking on it all the time...

quails can be quite nasty to each other if they are not happy with things..

what incubator did you win??

Yes, we incubated in...*thinks* 2004/5 and we built our own out of a polystyrene box, a beer heat mat and a few other bits. It was quite successful both times. First time we hatched 2 out of 3 known to be fertile eggs (beginners luck, both hens), and the second time we set 6 blue T*sco eggs and hatched a c0ck. He was a lovely lavender colour, but he got very violent so eventually we knocked him on the head.

I've also had to dispatch chickens before when they've been injured. It's not nice, but where it needs to be done I think I'm up to it.

The brooder is on its way, I didn't order that until I knew I'd won the incubator. The incy is an Octagon 20. The rabbit hutch that's here is 5 feet long and 2 feet square so will cater for a few birds. The one I'm collecting today is a two tier one, so 3 feet long by about 2 feet 6 high and 18 inches deep or so. I'll measure it once it's reconstructed.

How many quail eggs did you set? I thought I'd probably set 24 to aim for 6 females.

PS: Chin up Mr and Mrs Dave, I'll be thinking of you today *hugs*

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Davesnave I will be thinking about you and OH today...


LIR... the good thing with you, is that you are reading and understanding big dog, and being realistic... when I used to groom dogs many, many moons ago, I used to get customers in with their very elderly, and very ill dogs, and the owners could not see that the dog was suffering, they used to think a haircut and a bath would make it feel better, on a few occasions I refused to put the dog through a hair cut and a bath...


the brick building is finally fully roofed.. so now we need to keep an eye out for some external doors for it..


Alex... I ordered 60 eggs, as that is how many will fit into an octagon 20, ( I have 3 diff sizes of incubator) some were cracked when they arrived, at the moment we have approx. 20 living chicks, but I do invisage a few more going... what ratio of females/males I haven't got a clue until they are about 5 - 6 weeks old... the males make a high pitch call, which can travel, so just bare this in mind with neighbours etc..


I still think you should hatch and rear a batch of chicken eggs first, as its been a long while since you hatched eggs...


As the quails are sooooo small, we have them in one of our old glass tank viv's .. the chick crumbs are even too big for them to eat lol, so I whizz them up in a blender to get them finer...


right better get home ( up at ranch in caravan) to see to birds, and then off to work.... boooooo


EDIT.... I am surprised you hatched out an egg you bought from Tesco....

lostinrates

There was a phase where a few shop eggs were hatching out.....it was a news story.


So, having told horse owners they must take care of their horses I leave them to do it, and they fail. One has laminitis. . No joke at all.

Been out spent a small fortune on new fencing stuff ( my responsibility IMO). Might need more.

Oh well, we'll see.

Davesnave

Took cat over to the vet for 2pm. By then she was very much at peace, having spent the morning lying out in the sun in the garden while we weeded around the perennials.

Pleased to say, it was all pretty text-book.

Rummer

So sorry to hear that it was her time Dave it sounds as if her last few hours were perfect.