Black Star doesn't make it

Above are a few photos from last week from Zoe including the pigs arriving in the back of the car.

Unfortunately Black star (chicken) has been ill for a couple of weeks and wasn't getting better. In the end she was barely able to walk and clearly was not enjoying life any more. So I got the job of finishing her off. It was clearly for the best she was not a happy chicken any more. It does mean that we are now low on chickens and so also low on eggs. I am off next week to meet some chicken breeders to discuss a way forward. We want to get some chickens that will go broody so that we can start to raise eating chicken s as well as layers. We want to try and supply all our own chickens for eating. I am also booked in for an abattoir visit next week. I have never been to one before but want to go to see what it is like before we take the pigs in a few months.

The Pigs are starting to grow and getting very tame. They now are happy having strokes and the kids feed them out of their hands. They never took much notice of their wallow until yesterday when it was quite warm. Suddenly they were busy trying to extend it. As you can see from their faces this made for being covered in quite a lot of mud. They worked hard and the extension on the wallow is now quite big. The grass in their run is gradually disappearing as they root their way under it looking for exciting things to nibble. It does make you worry about pigs kept on concrete in sheds. All these pigs want to do is root and sleep (often on top of each other). If they are not able to root they are clearly going to be a problem.

The polytunnel is finally taking shape as can be seen above. My expert helpers were busy tightening bolts and connecting support bars. Zoe seems to think the whole thing is ugly, but I don't really see that. It seems OK to me.  If I am lucky it may be up and running by the end of the weekend. Just time to start doing lots of plating then.