*** First 2012 Duckling ***

whaa! Warning.. Cute Overload...

'Hello World'

'Just Hanging Out, Waiting For My Buddies'

'Not long to wait - I see a beak poking through!'

'Just need to dry my feathers. I'm going for the fluffy look'

Batch 1: One Week Old

Well, a week later and the six chicks are thriving. Very pleased with them :o)

*** First 2012 Chicks ***

Here we go! The first batch of the season have hatched! We have four Light Sussex bantams and two Pekins. Next week there should be a batch of ducklings then following on from those there are more bantams, quite a few large fowl, some more ducks and also some goslings.

So here they are, the first hatched of the year.

Some video- and below is Lucian trying to remember the name of the breeds .. awww

Goat Shots: Videos

We attempted to film the goat's injections but the vids did not come out too great so not particularly helpful/ informative I'm afraid. Here is Cornelius though and one of a shot being set up :o)

Miniature Pony: Hoof Picking

Here are vids of Jay having a go at picking out Luna's feet. It is really tricky trying to hoof pick a tiny pony! Really hard to get into a suitable position - this is a lot easier with a tall horse LOL

Goats Enjoying The Sun

Harry, Hermione, Cornelius & Runner enjoying the sunshine.

Luna's Summer Coat

Luna is moulting so bad I could make another pony!

Fly, Search!

Here are some shorts of Fly starting to learn to play 'Search'.

He is just learning what the word means - so I leave my keys where he can see them, tell him to search and when his nose touches the keys I sound his clicker and give a reward. I also say 'search' when his nose touches the keys to remind him of the command (well, when I remember! tut).

It is lots of fun :o)

oh.. and GREAT if I loose my keys lol

Eggs, Eggs, Eggs

Came back from auction with plenty of exciting eggs this week.

Now in the incubator (or resting, ready to go in) are~:

Welsh Harlequin Duck
Light Sussex Bantam
Goose
Khaki Campbell Duck
Millefleur Pekin Bantam
Lemon Cuckoo Pekin Bantam
Cuckoo Pekin Bantam
Salmon Pekin Bantam
Golden Partridge Pekin Bantam
Silver Grey Dorking
Sultan
Buff Orpington
Fresian

First 2012 chicks due on Thursday/Friday :o)

Puppy Party!

Fly attended his first puppy party at the veterinary surgery last night.

Sadly, for one reason and another there was only one other puppy for him to play with, but boy was she a perfect match for him! she was a beautiful golden retriever named Maggie and the two adored each other. They were the same size, similar age and temperament.

They went into the consultation room to pretend to be examined and Lucian pretended to be the vet which he thoroughly enjoyed!

We talked about behaviour etc with the staff and then loosed the pups off to have a tumble.

When we got home both Fly & Lucian were exhausted and immediately fell asleep.


We got a really useful wall planner with all of the things to remember to expose your puppy to and there were CDs with sounds on to play to your pup at home.
Looking forward to next week! Here's hoping for some more puppies :o)

Mummy Pig Is At It Again..

..Making babies that is!

We bought mum inside for the last litter as it was Winter but now we are finally into Spring, we will leave her free ranging outside and see how she gets along raising her litter. It is very tempting to bring her in again as it is undoubtedly a safer option for the pups - however it means that mum has to be confined for a long time again after having free ranged and pups miss out on being born into a much more natural setup than living in a small cage in the house. Plus daddy pig misses out on the whole experience and is left alone, wondering where his wife disappeared to. So yes, there is risk involved for the new litter, but I believe in mummy pig and her ability to raise and protect her young.

Ginger doing a great impression of Jabba the Hut! LOL

Duck Eggs!

Mrs Duck has started to lay. I found a nest of 7 dirty eggs behind a wooden crate that we leave hay in for the guineas and rabbits.

I took 3, marked them with a black cross and replaced them in an effort to get Daisy to lay in the same place each day. It worked for one day but then i guess she must have noticed that I pinched her shiny new egg and this morning she lay elsewhere. So here we go.. daily duck egg hunt lol

Place Your Bets Please

OK, ears up? ears down? one up one wonky?

I vote wonky!

Lucian Riding on Luna

We finally managed to get a saddle smaller than a cub saddle that would fit on Luna.
Lucian likes to sit on her but is not confident when she moves about and makes him wobble but we managed to encourage him to have a little potter about in the garden to build his confidence a bit.

Luna seems to really enjoy giving rides and is very very good at taking it slow and steady. I think she can sense that her little rider is a bit worried.

Fly's Recall Training

This weekend, we have had two trips to the park to work on Fly's recall so that we can trust him off lead.

We decided to train him to a whistle and started by having him on a 15ft line.

We found a nice quiet spot away from other dog walkers and played some really fun games with him that got Lucian involved and enjoying himself too. It was great fun!

First we played 'Drop the Cookie'. This entails tossing a cookie a few feet away from Fly then running like crazy in the opposite direction. The idea is that he ignores the temptation and the distraction of the cookie (which could represent any distraction such as another dog for example) then follows us instead. I blew the whistle when he started to chase us to get him to associate the whistle with 'come, follow us'.

Then we played 'Hide & Seek' which Lucian could relate to really well.
Lucian came with me to hide behind trees while Fly stayed with Jay on the long line, then I blew the whistle and as soon as Fly found us we sounded the clicker and gave him lots of treats and fuss.

Another game we played was 'Wounded Caribou' whereby we ran about playing with Fly's rope toy and trying to rile him up into a frenzy of excitement. Then suddenly we would stop dead, nobody look at Fly and all walk off very, very slowly. The idea of this game is to teach the dog to control himself quickly if he gets over excited. The trouble is we actually struggled to get him very excitable! Kinda begged the question as to whether we wanted to teach him to reach that level of excitement at all. We might just use this game if and when we have trouble with Fly failing to control himself.

Fly was tired out after all the excitement, so we slowed down and did a few plain recalls. Jay held onto Fly, I walked off then blew the whistle to test out whether Fly had truly learned what the whistle means. He had. He came streaking toward me and of course got a click and lots of rewards.

Jay suggested that maybe he was only coming because he wanted to get to me, being his main 'handler' - which was a good point, so we swapped over. We were pleased when Fly still responded correctly and although he checked back to me for direction, he eventually decided to follow the whistle and ran to Jay.
It was evident that he had learned that whistle = come.
All we have to do now is practice until we fully trust that we are in control of Fly off lead.

Next weekend I will try to make a video as it is so much easier to explain when you can see him in action.

We are very pleased with how Fly is coming along and the £60 we spent booking him into formal training classes for April might turn out to be a bit of a waste of money!

First Egg Fertility

We candled the first trial batch of eggs on Friday night and had just over 50% fertililty which means we are all systems go go go! The aim now will be to keep the incubator full until September/ October time when fertility will drop back down again.

So - we are now expecting 10 ducklings and 9 bantam chicks! 

Although fertility was acceptable for this time of year, a few of the eggs were either old or poor stock because they were fertile but had failed to develop. That could mean the batch are a bit duff and produce weak chicks or poor hatchability. Only time will tell for these eggs, but as the weeks go on we should start to see higher fertility and lots of good strong chicks :o)

Denouncing the Dominance Theory

Get your ear plugs - or more appropriately, your blind folds out. I am on my soap box.

I managed to have two great walks with Fly today and get lots and lots of training in. From loose lead walking, keeping his attention, basic commands and even teaching him that he 'can' stop to sniff the environment, so long as it is on my command and on my terms.. thus becoming a partner in his fun experiences as opposed to the one who always drags him away from something interesting by the neck!

So what is my point? Training method is my point. I decided from the get go to use Positive Training to teach Fly what I expect of him from manners to skills & tricks.
Last time we did this, last time we had a puppy, we failed dismally to train her up to any great standard and we whole heartedly believed it was because she was a wolfdog type and was extremely pack orientated as opposed to most breeds who work well for food. This is probably true for the most part but the difference was that I completely bought into the Dominance Theory. I believed all of those trainers who repeated the same old 'pack rules' and had you believe that you should treat a domestic dog like a wolf and become its 'leader'.

For the purposes of training Fly - seeing as the dominance theory sure did not work for me first time around, I have thrown the entire concept out of the window and simply used the clicker training, reward based method. Undesirable behaviours are simply ignored. No attempts made to assert dominance or any of that crap. I am Fly's partner, not his leader and guess what? IT WORKS. It really does. I am thoroughly pleased with his progress in the short time I have worked with him so far.
He can already perform the following, not yet with 100% accuracy and consistency but he can repeat all of this in public with distractions which, for his age, I am very impressed with.
* Sit
* Down
* Watch Me (Focussed attention)
* Leave It
* High Five
* Here (come)
* Off
* Spin
* Wait
* Go Sniff
* Carry
* Outside (for toileting/house training)
* On Your Bed
* Choose A Toy

also doing well with the following:
* No Jumping Up (getting good at this when meeting people)
* Loose Lead Walking
* No Biting/Nipping
* Avoiding Food Aggression/ Possessiveness
* No Chasing Small Animals


As you can see, so far so good! Fly is only 3 months old so will keep posting updates now and then about how his training is going and whether this method turns out to be as good as it appears to be.

Down with the dominance theory! lol

ok, I'll put my soap box away for a while :o)

Goat Shananigans

How dare I feed the animals late!! Shock, horror. Well this is what I did yesterday and guess what Hermione did about it today? She decided to go on a mission to ensure I did not dare be late with her feed bucket ever again!!!

I was in the kitchen preparing said feed buckets and various animal breakfasts when I heard a goat bleeting far too close to home... on inspection it was of course naughty Hermione up at the house! Not only that but Runner was somehow in HER pen with Harry... all part of an elaborate distraction of course.

First of all she somehow busted out of her pen which is constructed of 6 x 6 ft panels of stock fencing PLUS regular wire fencing on the inside seeing as Hermione likes to get her head stuck in fencing. But don't let that fool you.. stupid she is not... after having managed to make a tiny gap in the stock fence she must have squeezed through into the billy pen, leaped over their fence (designed for well behaved goats.. not Miss Hermione) into the pony pen where I believe Luna the pony would have chased her off with a nip and she leaped over the pony fence and came trotting on up to house in search of breakfast.

To break out of an enclosure takes a canny goat - but to break out of THREE in a row must have taken some serious plotting and planning in the goat shed at night. I wondered what that torch and map were doing in there....

I don't know how much she paid him, but as I was trying to lift the great lump and get her back in her enclosure, a buzzard swooped down and had a pop at my poor hen! Just as I ripped my trousers on a screw that was sticking out of the fence.

The moral of the story is, 'animals love their routine' and woe betide you if you have one, and you break it.

__________


NB
The hen was ok, she was clever enough to dive into a bush but I think it was just a baby buzzard practicing his hunting skills as one would not really take a fully grown chicken.

Fly's 'Show & Tell'

Well, we just got back from our trip to school and Fly was superb!!! He had three rounds of 10 children petting him and asking questions. He managed to do some tricks for them such as sit, down, spin, watch & high five. Lucian was very proud indeed and Fly got invited back after Easter!

Fly's First Walk

Well, Fly went on his first proper walk this morning, up to school.

He did not want to leave the garden but with plenty of encouragement he finally followed Lucian and off we went. It did not take long for him to get the hang of walking on the lead.

We did have a bit of an 'event' where he freaked out at two big dogs barking behind a fence and I was not holding him tight enough... luckily as he legged it down the road I managed to get his attention and get him to sit. I had the clicker so when he sat I clicked and he just waited for the treat. I am very glad that I decided to go ahead with a bit of basic training before puppy classes start!

Fly was afraid of the usual puppy hang ups such as moving cars, strangers walking toward, strange dogs barking in gardens, crowds of people. But he gets a gold award for trying his little best. I think he did brilliantly and tomorrow I am going to attempt to leave him outside school by himself for a few minutes.
Today there was a beautifully behaved black lab for him to practice with. Fly sat next to him and watched his model behaviour. In fact he copied and sat quietly so here's hoping he does the same tomorrow.

Of course we still have another adventure today at school as Fly is going in for a 'show and tell' this afternoon... will report back later   :oI

Goat Annual & Bi-Annual Shots

Today the goats got a shot of Dectomax wormer - the billys weighed in at 28kg & 30kg, the wether was 22kg and a (hopefully) pregnant nanny at 25kg. They had 0.9ml and 0.8ml shots respectively.

They will receive the same shot in 6 months time and next week they are due an annual vaccine. We use Lambivac. We 'might' have a go at filming it but it is a two person job to restrain the goat, draw the dose and give the injection so it might depend upon whether there is someone around to play photographer :o)

Hatchery 2012

Today, 3rd March, the incubators have been kicked into life and the first batch of eggs have been set.

We are very excited and I cannot wait to see the first chicks emerge from their shells.

The fertility still has to be tested and we will be looking for 50% + before filling the incubator and keeping it at capacity for the season.

All being well, our first hatch should be a dozen Welsh Harlequin ducklings, half a dozen mixed pot luck ducklings, 3 Millefleur Pekins and 14 Light Sussex Bantam chicks.

Feels good to get started again after winter hit the pause button.