Ducks and the Ice Cream Van - on my smallholding (From Smallholder)

Ducks and the Ice Cream Van - on my smallholding

9:59pm Thursday 22nd April 2010

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A typical evening here on my smallholding. Look around to see where the Abacot Rangers are and cannot find them. I mentioned to one of Smallholder magazine’s esteemed contributors, Mike Ashton, that these were the “thickest” ducks I had ever had. Previously it had never occurred to me that ducks would not return to their house at night as in many, many years of duck keeping this had always happened. Runners, large commercial ducks, Bali, Crested and my beloved possibly Rouen type Duckle and family all returned at night – if indeed they had left the boundary fence.

Not so the Rangers, never was a breed so aptly named. Mike corrected me firmly but emphatically on my statement. The Rangers were not thick in fact quite the opposite. They were perfectly adapted to utilise range and territory to feed economically on naturally available foods eg invertebrates. That’s why, he gently pointed out, they are called Rangers. Because they Range. OK so now I am not looking for four thick ducks but four amazingly bred foragers. Not sure it makes so much of a difference when I hear them quacking across our lane in a hay field. Picking up a long stick I edge my way along the side of the hay field – fortunately it belongs to friends. I find them swimming in the ditch which is full of disgusting drainage water. They put their heads up, bills full of slimy weed and dripping brackish water. “Go to bed” I say firmly. They quack.

“GO TO BED!” Reluctantly they drag themselves out of the steep sided dyke – question, why do they not go in my lovingly constructed artificial pond with easy steps when they can get in and out of a vertically sided ditch? I’m now inside the field and they decide to leg it through the hedge onto the verge and then make their way back down the middle of the road. I cannot get through the hedge and across the dyke so I am stuck listening to the sound of a thundering ice cream van, bell blasting out.

It’s getting closer and closer and it’s not going slowly (or quietly). (Vaguely I wonder where it’s going, I don’t recall seeing that many children down our rural road and also its freezing cold), I cringe and wait for the screech of brakes and quacking. Almost nonchalantly the Rangers remove themselves to the verge but there is a bit of sharp braking as no doubt the driver did not expect to see four multi coloured ducks waddling down the road. I come through the gate and cross the road just as the ducks go in through the gate. Disaster averted. The foraging wonders retrieved for another night.

(And despite their magnificent ability to find their own food they are greedily tucking into the mixed corn and layers pellets I’ve put in for them).

In case you wonder why we don’t have boundary fences, we do. Good ones. Which seem to present no problems to the Rangers if they want to leave our premises.

Elderly hens Now to shut the elderly hens in. They are four or five, not sure how old and there are three and they lay one egg a day between them. Sometimes two. I think that’s a good effort.

When I go to the RWAS Smallholder and Garden Festival on the 15-16 May I will order some day olds from an excellent poultry nationwide poultry supplier. I am going to get Bluebells, Speckledys and Black Rocks and I am going to rear about 50 and keep 6 and sell the rest to approved homes. (I’m horrible to buy hens from, I virtually want to see bank account details and have written reports sent to me daily!). But I always seem to get such nice people want to buy my girls. I wanted to get some at the beginning of spring but I am so glad I didn’t as although the cold weather shouldn’t affect the rearing process which uses heat lamps, I think it will be pleasanter to rear in the warmer weather and I’ll be able to get them outside quicker. I shall then raise some more in the early Autumn. Back to the elderly hens. Normally the door to their house is open but due to a robin nesting in the string bag I can’t leave the door open so I have to let them out and then open it again to put them in. So I have to time it exactly right, just when they are about to go to bed or either they won’t oblige or they have gone somewhere else and it takes me ages to find them. Now to shut in the OEG bantam and chicks. That’s the birds done.

Pony power I’ve prepared the ponies’ feeds earlier but still need to muck out (work gets in the way – have to leave things to the evening to be at my desk early!). I put hay in the stables – made by my partner Mick with his elderly tractor, hay cutter and wuffler and it still smells beautiful. We’ve used so much this year as we’ve had to feed the exmoors who live out far more than usual. Some years we have hardly fed them hay at all as they are in 12 acres more or less and remain stubbornly fat all winter. This winter even they have lost weight (which did need doing) and they’ve had to have hay. I muck out cursing the two gates to the muck heap. We are just borrowing/buying a muck spreader to put it back on the fields. I had the ponies’ droppings tested for woms and they were negative though we do practise a worming programme. Then I get the ponies in, Jade the welsh cob is pleased to find her feed, Katie the young Exmoor is so sweet, she is the daughter of our mare and stallion and the donkey, Daisy follows them in.

Now to get the colt in. He is a year old and I have had to really dig deep in my pony education and handling tool kit to deal with him. Being a colt he is very mouthy and when he nips you the temptation is to smack. Wrong.

I’m not a wishy washy horse handler but it just doesn’t get me anywhere. It just makes him head shy, gets him panicky and makes him mouthier. Hmmm what to do? First of all, eliminate all tit bits (we’d had to use these a bit to get him used to being caught), secondly ooze patience and thirdly keep repeating whatever it is I want him to do until he does it. I’ve also found an eighteen inch long quite thick stick which I use solely as an extra arm to keep him straight and away from my body. I do not hit him with it, it is a guiding stick. (Sometimes a biting stick and occasionally a prodding stick!) He now understands “wait” and is extremely well acquainted with “no!” I can now put headcollar on and off without him throwing himself on the ground and we don’t rear now except in exceptional circumstances. Additionally he can walk through machinery (helpfully parked in the way by my partner, Mick who clearly wants my life insurance) and over pieces of wood left by the gate (see previous statement) and past flapping bits of clothes (again see previous statement). At the weekend he got put out with me in my nightdress and coat but I still had steel capped trainers on. We are making progress but its not all plain sailing. Every so often he relapses and I have to summon my pony patience and repeat step one until he subsides.

What do they say? Ask a stallion, discuss it with a mare and tell a gelding!

This weekend Liz is examining a Pony Club Riding and Road Safety Test and visiting East Anglian Game Fair, Royal Norfolk Showground near Norwich while Mick is drooling at old tractors at Cheffins Vintage Sales, Sutton near Ely. Liz has just reading Hedgerow Medicine from Merlin Unwin books and learning how to make things like Chickweed bath. Really it’s fascinating. She’s also reading First Light by Geoffrey Wellum Viking which is the real story of a Spitfire pilot. With any luck Liz and Jade might spend some time trotting round the ménage (both at the same time) in preparation for getting fit for their riding holiday in July. Liz will definitely be spending lots of time in the greenhouse desperately catching up on seed sowing.