Well there are only 3 sleeps left until the big day
I can imagine that children (both big and small) are getting rather excited by now, hoping that they have done enough to secure a visit from Father Christmas.

I am finally all ready (except for locating some Candy Cane for my tree, that is) and thought it a good time to say Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and more importantly, thank you to all our customers in 2011. We sincerely hope that everyone has a peaceful and joyful time.

I hope that 2011 has been a good year and that 2012 will be just as good.

Hello peeps

We have had a few requests of late for Gift Vouchers (yep, Christmas is coming up rather quickly now). If you are looking for something different but do not know what to get - or even want to contribute towards a new Incubator, Chicken house or other Chicken accessories then you can always give us a call and we can arrange a gift voucher for that special someone. Just ask for me (Claire) when calling.

Well our little lady Bearded Dragon has finally decided to lay her eggs, so I was busy setting up a RCOM Juragon Rx Incubator yesterday to transfer the eggs to as soon as possible.

She is now happily basking, I would imagine she is quite pleased to be free of eggs

She has laid 21 eggs so in approximately 3 months time I will be setting up the small vivarium ready for the little beauties. Watching the Baby Bearded Dragons hatch is an amazing experience as I’m sure any Bearded Dragon keeper will tell you. We had a great success rate last year and I have one of the babies at home - “Alucard”. I just hope that I don’t succumb this time around as I know there are only so many animals my fiance can take, lol

I don’t want to believe that summer is over but I think it is inevitable
I hope you all had a good summer break and if you went away with your family, had a good time and were able to recharge your batteries.

I was lucky and caught a Last Minute holiday in Devon, which had such highlights as Sheep Racing and holding/flying a Harris Hawk. I was rather proud as some places we visited had chickens and I was able to name quite a lot of the breeds. Now I know this isn’t much to be proud of, however a year or so ago I knew very little about chickens. In the grand sceme of things, I probably still know very little, but I still sounded very knowlegable to my better half

When I did my food shopping on the way home from my holiday I saw that the Supermarkets were not slow to get their Christmas chocolates etc on display! I think this is the earliest I have seem them surface in a few years (Maybe it’s just a sign of me getting older, lol).
If your are as keen as the Supermarkets then just browse the site and I’m sure you will find something to get for the keen Chicken Keeper in your family.

All the Chicken Houses are now in stock. We received the Jersey Giants yesterday and the Brahmas also came in this week so they are both back available on 24hr delivery, which is brilliant news. I know that there are quite a few of our customers who were waiting for the stock to come in before placing your order, so thought that this is the best place to let you know, so you can get your new chicken house on its way.

The not-so-little Rheas are doing well . They are growing at an amazing rate and can single handidly eat a whole lettuce in about 1 minute. I give them some food and go and fetch the water and by the time I am back with them all the best bits have already been scoffed! Their wing feathers are coming on a treat and they fluff them out to try and be all big and brave - but they still come running cheaping mind, so they just look the part, lol.
If you recall a few months ago I incubated quite a bit. Well the first of the eggs from my little hens has been laid. Trevor found the egg and it was quite a distance from the chicken coop, actually near the new chicken houses which had just been delivered, so she was a little away from home! I’m sure she will get used to it all soon though, and it will become second nature to her

Firstly, can you believe it’s August already?! Soon people will be talking about that certain celebration held in December (notice I didn’t say the name…don’t want to be wishing the year away, lol).

To try and extend the Summer feeling we have a couple of top offers on for August.

Firstly the lovely little Rhode Island Red (RIR) House and Run, has come down in price to £159.99, which is, I’m sure you will agree, a brilliant price for a combined chicken house and run which features 15mm thick timber. A lot of people ask if the houses are treated at all and they are - they are treated with an oil based preservative so you don’t have to think about doing this before putting them together, making the constructon even easier. At this price it really isn’t too pricey to start out and have a couple of chickens in your back garden, and you could soon be enjoying your own fresh eggs every day.

The second offer is the P&T 48 egg incubator which is now also £159.99. This incubator offers space to incubate 48 chicken eggs, and features auto-turn, automatic temperature control and also has a built in sensor for the humidity, so it takes the guess work out of controlling the humidity. When you see that fully automatic Incubators are over double this price for the same capacity, you can see how good this offer is.

Combine these prices with the possible £150 you could win from Your Chickens Magazine - what a steal

Well the Rheas are growing - very quickly!  They are probably twice the size of what they were and have learnt to run around like fools, excercising their legs.

I’m still feeding them, what appears to be all the time, lol (3 times a day) and, it’s official, Rheas love green food.  I go to chat with them and the little “meowing” noise changes to a cheeping noise and the run around as if they have been fed something a bit dodgy!  :)  I have started to sing to them also - I’m not sure if Trevor is likely to carry on this little tradition I’ve started though, lol

Now you can imagine when you feed an animal boiled egg, cabbage, broccoli, amongst other things (chick crumb etc) that they are able to produce some amazing smells!  But all the same they are thriving and that’s the important thing ( I have told myself this numerous times whilst cleaning them out, trust me). 

Remember we still have a couple of RCOM incubators left on special offer from hatching these little beauties so check the Ex-Display/Used Incubators section of the site for a bargain.

Well it’s time for another feed so off now to watch their little dance show…

Whilst Trevor is away, taking a well earned break, we have a decent spell of weather here and the Bees decided that they had raised a new queen and were going to divide, so one of the hives swarmed.

Now I’m not exactly scared of bees however I have always sought a healthy distance to avoid me possibly running around looking all a little too feeble!

So when I came in to work on the Monday, and was advised that the bees had swarmed you can imagine a certain level of apprehension.  Unfortunately if they were not shown to a new home by us they would have just flown off and found one themselves, which would have meant that Trevor’s hard work would have literally flown away.

Now, bearing in mind Trevor is quite a bit taller than me (a good foot taller) his bee suits are not meant to be worn by someone 5ft 2inches (those 2 inches are very important when you are my height).  I donned the suit and have to say I looked a little like i was trying out for a MC Hammer video!  Under the suit my jeans were taped to my wellies as an additional precaution.  Luckily Glyn was also there to assist, however I think he had quite a bit more apprehension than I did. 

Never the less we trapsed up the field (trapsed is the word as it wasn’t that graceful) and was able to scoop the bees up and put them into a new holding hive thingy.  I apologise to all bee keepers, and Trevor, for my lack of termanology. 

The bees have gladly settled, however I really do not think that it is a “skill” that will ever feature on my CV

As Trevor has been busy incubating different breeds, we have now got our hands full with all different types of birds!

The newest chicks are the Rheas.  They are truly fascinating little things.  I’m saying little just for now as very soon they will tower over me (I am on the short side ). Once they have grown up then I’m sure that they will assist the Llamas in deterring Mr Fox also.

I have been takinga few photographs (like a proud mother) but the rather inquisitive chicks were fascinated with the camera and as soon as they saw it they ran over to me and pecked the camera constantly, thinking I was about to give them some more food :)  In the upcoming weeks I will make sure that I download some photos to the Blog and keep you posted on their progress.

Trevor used the RCOM 20 Pro incubators and RCOM 50 Pro incubators to hatch the eggs and I would advise to keep looking on the ex-demo/ex-display section as we may have a couple of incubators on special offer very soon (I have to clear this with Trevor first mind you, lol).