Rural Life

A guest contributor dictates....

It seems to me that all blogs need a little refreshment from time to time - and this one is no exception.  I have also been accused of not playing my part in the household and just flopping around rather uselessly of an evening rather than helping with the Christmas cards or similar (my portrait at the end of this piece is not typical I assure you). So to set the record straight, I had better describe how I help out in these cold times.

Well firstly it is important to note that without me and my two chums, "they" would never get out of bed in the morning, but the need to tend to our needs means they do actually see the morning!  Secondly, the house would not be properly aired at this time of year, without me constantly reminding them to open a door or window so that I can get into the garden, or come back into the house.

I have also been doing a certain amount of digging so that all those nasty pests in the raised beds are killed off by the frost, plus I have been inspecting the bark of the cherry and pear trees pretty closely for other nasty things - I was reminded I needed to have a go at the apricot today too.

Then there are my jobs in the community, keeping various elderly neighbours on their toes.  I have to say that if I wasn't there to knock pots over, scare chickens, bat nuts about and look round open doors and windows, these poor old things would just stay rooted to their kitchen chairs, dealing with vegetables.  I am honestly doing a public service.

Perhaps the most onerous of my current duties is sorting out that young brat next door - you, know boy kittens think they can get away with anything by looking small, but that doesn't wash with me and he is going to get a jolly good thrashing when I next get my paws on him.  Of course, the poncy white oaf that sits on my wall needs to be sorted out frequently as well - I know his Mum is on the village council but I still say he is a waste of space with the memory of a goldfish.

So as you can see, my days are full, when "they" just sit around in front of these computer thingies with an odd unfocussed look on their faces (until reminded to move by me demanding food), and I am therefore entitled to my 18 hour snooze.  So there!

One cat successfully rehoused

Earlier this year, I wrote an impassioned plea about the need to get male cats castrated being as important as getting females spayed - you can read it here.

One of the reasons for this was that a male cat had turned up chez nous following his hormones and the scent of a female cat on heat.  When he arrived, he was well fed, with a flea collar and with the gangley awkwardness of a young cat who hasn't filled out properly yet.  We think he had travelled a long way to get to us - no one in the village knew or would admit to being his owner.

Over the three months he lived in our garden, he lost condition badly (despite being given or stealing some food), he got beaten up by older, more experienced male cats in the area, he lost his flea collar, he developed a huge abscess on his leg and the final straw was that he got shot at by someone with an air rifle.  We spent over 100 Euros taking him back and fro to the vet and feeding him, worming him and giving him flea treatment.

We put up rather pathetic notices with lovely photos in the bakers, the Mairie and the veterinary surgery and I called a number found at the vet's for someone who had lost a cat of his description, but just got laughed at.

It couldn't go on, so we have found him a new home.  He has a new name - instead of Elvis (from the phone call) or Sh*t for Brains (he isn't the brightest bulb in the packet) - he is now Barney.  He goes to the vet on Tuesday to be castrated, and in the mean time, he has the run of a lovely water mill in the country, and two people who love him to bits.  I hope that is the end of the drama and he can enjoy the remaining 5 lives he has left with them.

Here is Elvis when he arrived around us.

 

And here is Barney a day before he went to his new home.

A more determined broody chicken

Most of the visits to this blog recently seem to be generated from desperate people doing a Google search on broody chickens.  So I had better 'fessup that the tried and tested method of getting the main culprit chez nous out of her broodiness hasn't worked with Black.  We are going to have to find a Plan D!

The first two batches of chickens we had were what I would describe as ISA Browns - the beige jobs that are bred for the battery houses and similar and which you can pick up very cheaply in the local markets.  They do a brilliant job at laying an egg a day for a year and after than the problems start as they are sadly not bred for longevity.  In a previous post I outlined why we don't buy them any more, but one good side to them is that in my experience of our six and feckless Joel's two, they don't do broody.

Last year we had dreadful problems with White - our mongrel Light Sussex, who went broody about every four to six weeks.  But while she is the largestof our girls, she is really rather sweet, and would fluff up when being lifted out of the coop and gurgle a bit, but was otherwise pretty resigned to it all.  Black, our youngest and a possible mongrel Maran, has decided that a stint of brooding is what she wants  to do, and she is taking it very seriously.  I haven't been pecked yet but it is only a matter of time, and I daren't try Plan E (send in the cats) as I think the vet bills would be too high!  Having been locked out of the coop for a little too long (her opinion, not mine), she has found her way under the coop and hasn't been seen for 2 days now.  Tomorrow we will have to move the coop and scoop her out.

From that description, you can see why there is no photo of Black being broody, just one of her before the mood came on her.  For the quibblers out there - you know who you are Roger - yes, I do realise she is much more gold than Black, but only from the front and side.  If we find a way to break this one, I may have to patent it!

A nice clutch of eggs

With spring doing its thing, the chickens are having a lovely time.  There are still lots of juicy slugs around, plus snails (slugs with a bit of roughage one might say), and the worms are near the surface to have a go at too.  We haven't got much planted in the kitchen garden so they still have the run of the raised beds.  Much as I would like them to give the raised beds a good clear out and get every last weed and seed out, sadly they seem more interested in taking dust baths in them - heigh ho!

One thing that spring seems to bring out in chickens and in chicken owners is concern about broodiness.  While White doesn't seem to have succumbed to the lure of fixing herself in the coop all day every day yet, Black has decided that getting up in the morning is not as much fun as sitting on the odd egg, however as soon as the run door is left open for a rampage in the garden, any fascination with the inside of the coop goes, as she dashes for the choicest dust baths and best slugging terratory.

Lots of people come to this blog looking for advice on how to deal with broody chickens - good luck guys!

Here is a particularly lovely clutch of eggs that our girls laid last month - we hoped they would come up with chocolate ones over the weekend, but sadly we had to make do with shop bought ones instead.

Rules on Road Kill

It is that time of year when we are warned that boar are on the move.  Actually twice recently the motorways round here have been closed as groups of boar were on the carriageway.  A boar can do an awful lot of damage to a car.

We have noted that the start of the hunting season round here is always marked by the tale of some poor defenceless aged peasant driving home late at night who is willfully attacked in his car by a wild boar.  The outcome varies, but the most common version is that said poor peasant is in hospital, the car is written off, the boar escapes and had to be tracked down by the plucky hunters, who donate a large portion of the kill to a local OAP home canteen.

My interpretation is that some drunken old boy with dodgy vision is driving along in his "sans permis" car (small metal box powered by lawnmower engine), sees movement and chases it, thinking it is a good idea and he is indestructable as he is drunk and in his little car, but o dear, a boar is bigger and stronger than said car.

Be that as it may, many round here have noticed that while boar get ever more common, hunters who can actually shoot one get ever more rare, being more likely to shoot each other, their dogs or buildings (some friends lost a bathroom window which looked suspicious).

This year the local paper has been giving out advice as to what to do if you meet a boar on the road.  You are recommended not to try to hit it - they make an awful mess of the car.  If you can't avoid it, make sure it is dead (not sure how you are meant to do that), call the police and inform them you hit and killed it, and load the carcase in the car for consumption at home.  If you fail to call the police and are caught with it, you may be done for killing animals with an unapproved method!

My reading of this is that your car is knackered so while you save the money to get the car fixed, you have something to eat at any rate!

The importance of spaying tomcats

Spring is in the air now - well we are into March after all - and at this time of year, cats' attention turns to sex.  Particularly those cats that have not been seen to.  Our two girls were neutered before they were allowed out, and we got next door's girl cat done (with permission) once her kittens had left home.  However some new people moved into the courtyard and with the impetuousness of youth, thought that a cat would be a good idea, irrespective of whether they have any outdoor area for it, the time to look after and feed it or the money to have it spayed.  Don't get me started on the selfishness of that.

It is quite cute, but the first time it was chucked out of the window to do its business in the courtyard, it got jumped on and raped by two tom cats in succession - while the owner looked on!  Since then two more toms have turned up and had a go, while the girls of the area don't like the poor wee thing as she is competition for food.

So the sad thing is that in a few weeks there will be another litter of unwanted kittens doing the rounds, which may survive being squashed on the road before they are rehoused, but who knows?  We could well find them in the well as well.

Even sadder however is the toll on the local tomcats.  With four on the scene they were always fighting and having sex and not really thinking about staying safe.  To my knowledge, two have been knocked over on the road, and we suspect have crawled somewhere to die, another is limping around our garden with a bad leg and unsure of where he lives.  If their hormones had been under control, they wouldn't have been quite so daft and might still be around.

So people, heed my words!  Spay both your male and your female cats - it is better for them and it is better for you and it makes life a lot easier for all.

Cats and Toads don't mix!

Our two cats have taken well to out door activities and I will publish their respective tallies of the local wildlife (excluding butterflies, dragonflies and baby lizards, which we have decided don't count) at the end of the year.

Maigret is particularly outdoorsy - her thick and lush fur protects her from scratches, other than other cats, her perfect form means she is well placed for hunting and she doesn't set her sights too high.  Poirot, on the other hand, is not well formed and her coat is much thinner.  She also has large expanses of pink skin under white fur which all kinds of everything finds particularly attractive.  Consequently she has had bites, eczema, scratches and fleas through the summer.  She is also rather ambitious when it comes to catching things - pigeons (three this year), chickens (not ours, the neighbour's and thus very embarrassing), other cats, and her latest attempt was the garden toad.

Now Toad is a very good garden companion.  He or his descendants have been getting rid of our slugs for the past 8 years at least.  He generally stays near the house now, since we started to keep chickens 3 years ago, and favours the heaps of stone as his dwelling.  Imagine his horror as he started to get his winter quarters to his liking when all of a sudden a white furry paw followed by a white furry face tried to get in there as well! 

We presume he squirted some secretion or Poirot got some secretion on her paw, which she then stuck in her mouth.  The upshot of it was that Poirot jumped off the rock pile and started whimpering and foaming at the mouth.  She carried on slathering at the mouth for a good half hour.  Initially we were really worried - we thought she had been stung - and then I checked round the rock pile and found Toad and realised what had happened.

Once she had been sick, we provided a wee morsel of tasty food to take away the taste and over the next hour she perked up, had a fight with Maigret, had her little lump of garlic sausage and then a bowl of crunchies and was fine.  She won't go near the rock pile though!

I didn't have the presence of mind or heart to photograph the wild killer cat in her moment of frothing at the mouth, so here is an aerial shot of her pretending to be a jungle panther.

Introducing a new bird

One of our Marans, Black, was never right from the day we got her.  While we managed to do something about the massive bald spot on her chest, her depression and other problems couldn't be sorted so easily and she died on the 19th September.  This upset White rather - she has always been a sensitive soul and goes broody by moon phases (so boring that) - and she produced 3 shell-less eggs in quick succession before getting back to her old form of over-feathery greedy gut-bucket.

This left us with a problem, as we like to have three as a social group, but we were also hoping to start letting them freely range in October to sort out the slug problem.  This meant that if we were going to replace Black, it had to be done quickly.

Bauge market is a good source of chickens, with two poultry vans each week so you can make sure you get the colour, breed, and type of bird you want (currently there is a run on quail and young guinea fowl).  We went along on Monday afternoon and sussed out the two boxes of Black Marans, and as both boxes looked good, went to the van with the shorter queue.

We gave our new girl a good looking over before we bought (learnt our lesson from last time), and had her ceremonially stuffed into the requisite cardboard box with holes, tied up with blue string, and took her home to introduce to the others (White and Spot).

Black 2 is a young pullet, probably about 4 weeks off laying, so she is quite small but fully feathered and with a short comb still.  It took her half an hour to find her way out of the box, and while Spot was a bit shirty with her, White ignored her as she was still in mourning for Black 1. 

They are still sorting out the pecking order in the run, but at night Black 2 is happily allowed onto the sleeping perch to provide extra warmth.  White is now out of mourning and is also keeping Black 2 in her place, but she is a bit crafty and has found a perch that neither of our plump girls can get on to while she puts on bulk and grows up herself.  While Black 2 gets the odd nip on the neck, it is not the wings out, feet up, fierce fighting that would mean we have a problem, so we think we have got away with it.

The one problem with these three pretty chickens, is that unlike the hybrids intended for the Battery Units, which I disapprove of, they do seem to be rather on the dim side, but that is a story for another day.  Anyway, below are Black 2 refusing to come out of her box, White doing what she does best (eating) and Spot doing what she does best (being dim).

 

The kitten saga is nearly sorted....

Well, the kitten saga is nearly sorted out.  When I last wrote, our garden was awash with small, cute flea-bags.  We had notices out everywhere and about a week ago it was all looking as though it was sorted.  Friends of ours had reserved the male and female with white socks, the black one was going back to the person who originally chose her, but had to go into detox so sent her back, and fluffy Fifi was going to a village 5 miles up the road.

So far so fine.

Tuesday, the feckless owner of the mother cat, had friends round, got bladdered and gave away the two with socks and Fifi, shut the black one in the house on her own and left the Mummy cat outside where she could get into trouble in so many different ways.

Wednesday, the detoxed one took his kitten back.

Friday afternoon, the feckless one left a note on his door bidding us all adieu, and drove off leaving both his cats and both his chickens behind without food or shelter.  Either he has gone on holiday, gone to kill himself, or run away.  Our friends whose reserved kittens were given away on Tuesday, and who are understandably rather upset, are planning retribution in the form of giving Momma cat a kind and loving home, where she will be fed, watered, sheltered, loved to pieces, de-flea-ed, de-wormed and neutered.  A bizarre form of retribution I grant you, but one that I am willingly aiding and abetting.

So here, feckless Joel, is your last chance!  Si vous ne reviendrez pas pour soigner vos animaux avant jeudi soir, vous ne trouverez plus Ninette!

There - my conscience is sorted out, and on Thursday evening, Ninette will have a loving home - she really is very sweet and deserves better than a chair in our garden.  See her below, in a blissful moment with Fifi and one of the Louis.

Feral kittens in the Baugeois

It is that time of year when all undeconstructed female cats produce huge numbers of lovely fluffy bundles.  Our two have been dealt with, so in theory we don't have that problem however next door's girl cat has produced a litter of very lovely kittens.  We think the father is next door's boy cat - and that fact is the sort of thing that will set me off on a major rant.

The litter was 5 kittens, but one didn't make it and one has theoretically found a home (and not just our garden), however if you live in the 49150 postcode area of France and would like a totally adorable kitten, contact me!  The feckless owner is doing nothing about rehousing them - source of another major rant.  They are ready NOW!

How can you resist this?  Further lovely photos of them can be found here.