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Sunday 20 November 2016

Three cockerels in the stable



As you can see, little Ulla did a U-turn and changed colours losing her roundness. Hello Ullrick!

This means that our poor hens and sheep have three odd sounding boys beeping and yodeling to them in the mornings. Monty takes this in his stride, as he is too much in love with our guest hens to really care about the other boys in the band. Little Matti (not so small anymore...) on the other hand is already having sparring sessions with the new guy. This is still a rather sweet affair, both trying to stare the other one down. As they have the eyes on the side of their faces, they end up leaning their heads and it looks like they just have a bad hearing problem. Both of them...

Then mini Ullrick fluffs up all his tiny feathers and they start to dance. Matti has grown up and is now a very handsome young cockerel. Mini Ullrick looks like a worn down bottle brush, so the whole thing is still a game to Matti. He refuses to be challenged by someone so young, which still brings his mother along for support, when out fighting. What the spring holds for us is a totally different kettle of fish...

As the stable is full of snuggled up animals my days seems to be constant cleaning and feeding marathons. The snow is melting away again but the grazing is over for this year. The slimy grass that will appear after the thaw is no good to anyone. I do wish that the hens would pop out occasionally when the weather gets warmer, as they need the exercise to stay nice and polite with each other. Mindy, Mandy, Molly and My have been out to play in the snow for a while almost every day during the cold spell. They run and battle with each other. A lot of head butting and jumping, but they soon start calling to be let in again. Half an hour’s worth of fresh air seems to be enough when it's cold outside. It has done them a world of good though, to stretch their legs and run off some of their roundness.

I'm writing this blog early in the morning, snug and warm in a big armchair in the living room. The days of sitting up in bed writing are over as dear husband needs to get some sleep in the mornings. This is not possible since Ebba the dog moved in. If she finds that dear husband is in bed after she's been out to check the world Ebba runs full pelt, leaps and lands on him, loudly wishing him a "Very Good morning". She then starts to chew on him for a bit, just to make sure he notices her and then a second leap from a short distance. Having 20 kilos worth of happy dog landing on you entitles you to be slightly cross. Dear husband just groans and I remove us from the room, briskly. Ebba is still waiting for the morning walk with her hero but now there is a closed door between them. The wait is not long, as dear husband only has time for an hours nap before the day begins.

Ebba is a fixer. She has removed all the support sticks from the indoor flowerpots. By standing on furniture she managed to pull them out without tipping over a single flowerpot. She then played her favourite game of "shredder" and turned the sticks into mulch. This game is apparently best played in our bed, very quietly so I did not hear a thing. Dear husband got home from work and wondered if I had started chopping wood indoors. Ebba was very proud.

Ebba likes the taste of furniture, mats, plants, pillows and us amongst other things. She also finds the drain in our shower to be fascinating and spends time guarding it. Why, we don't know, but it looks very sweet when a happy dog hurries past, on her way to check the drain situation. (It has been cleaned, so it should not be smelly....).

Ebba does not like walking on a lead with me. She behaves almost nicely with dear husband but takes walking with me as a joke. So until we get our act together dear husband is the main dog walker in our family and I spend a lot of time running around in a sheep paddock. (There are some funny, ironic jokes in that but we won't go into them right now....). I am learning to throw a Frisbee and that is a new skill, I guess. Teaching a dog some common sense, not so much my thing, it seems...

Monty, Ullrick and Matti will be a problem, early next spring. Where to place two sweet little cockerels and how to be able to do it.... We do have a lot of hens in the stable at the moment so maybe, just maybe the three boys could cohabit and behave. That's what I hoped about Monty and little Eric this spring and that did not happened. We'll see.... We just have to enjoy the winter and take what comes later. Ebba said she could help us out with the excess of cockerels but we politely declined the offer.

Sheep spend 15 percent of their time sleeping. Ebba, not so much...

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