A lot of birds
July 10, 2026
Our Bantam Silver Appleyards and East Indies
Okay so we have 22 birds now.
No I’m not quite sure how it happened and no it wasn’t in our plan, but we have 22 birds and the turkeys were meant to arrive on Tuesday. Thankfully they have been delayed until August, giving everyone time to settle in, but Jesus Christ we have 22 birds.
The brief breakdown of this is: 6 chickens 6 domestic ducks 6 bantam ducks 2 muscovies 2 geese
So breeding season is very much here, and Geoffrey, our drake has decided he might like to make the most of it. As a result we contacted our local bird rescue to see if she had any ducks, but she did not - which in a way is a good sign that they are being rehomed but I know a lot of drake dumping goes on this time of year. Instead we opted to go to a local poultry mart, in search of ‘one brown duck’. Instead of one brown duck, we came home with three east indies. East Indies are bantam ducks and cannot mix with a fully grown drake. We said we’d like the east indies please! And before I could let the nice man know that we would just go and get our cage, he began to chuck them into a huge feed bag, zip tie it closed, and stab a few breathing holes at the top. The whole way home I kept proclaiming THIS IS THE MOST COUNTRY THING I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED WE JUST GOT A FUCKIN BAG OF DUCKS DB. Sometimes I think I’ve adjusted to rural living, and other times you get a bag of ducks at a poultry mart. Further to this bizarre experience, I thought the seller said two ducks and a drake, but it became quickly apparent that they are in fact two drakes and a duck. This means that not only do we need an extra full size female duck (or two), but now we also need an extra three bantam ducks.
Anyway we were recommended a duck guy by a lot of people in the poultry community, and left his house with three Miniature Silver Appleyards, two Welsh Harlequins, and one Buff Orpington. I have been enamoured with Oprington ducks for a long time now, and earlier this year watched a video where a lovely Welsh gardener showed off his beautiful Welsh Harlequins, and fell totally in love with them. The Appleyards immediately got on with the East Indies! Success! Everyone immediately friends and virtually no separation time needed. However due to the time of year, it seems as though the full size girls are having a bit of trouble integrating with Ava, Goose and Geoffrey. For now we are keeping them separate, but allowing them to see each other. This resulted in us having to lift a very awkward, very heavy wooden dog kennel (which we bought from a local business) over trees, between bushes and over the very high fence of the duck run at 11pm in the dark and rain.
The new girls are incredibly skittish, and I hope they come round to us in time. Doris (the orpington) was brave enough to nibble my knuckle the other day, so I live in hope. We’ve named the Welshies Enid and Gladys. They are moulting at the moment so looking a little bit scraggly, but this will resolve with time and a few extra mealworms.
The geese are starting to free range now, and have stopped immediately attacking every other duck or chicken they see, which as you can imagine is great. When they’re in their pen, I collect dandelion leaves, and sit down beside them, feeding said leaves to them. I thought I was being friendly and kind, and a good goose parent. They now associate me with their favourite snack, and when they see me when they’re out ranging, they get excited at the prospect of delicious dandelion leaves, run at me full speed, honking and flapping their wings. It is utterly terrifying. They are not much shorter than me (I am 5’4 on a good day) and I am reconsidering how I greet people when I am excited to see them. Perhaps I do the human equivalent and scare the clean shite out of them.
Kiki and Chuck, the muscovies, have settled in really well, and will tolerate a few strokes in exchange for mealworms. Chuck was a bit wobbly on his legs for a few days, possibly due to his rapid growth, but adding extra niacin to his feed really helped. Kiki’s mask has started forming around her bill, which is wild because I kind of forgot that it’s a distinguishing feature of muscovies. Every morning when we open their kennel, they run the whole length of the pen, flapping, wings out (we call this sports mode). They are magic.
In chicken updates, everyone has been through a recent bout of worming. For whatever reason, the feed shop gave us a dewormer that renders egg consumption unsafe, so we are egg free and feeling very wasteful, since we are getting 6 eggs each day that we have to chuck into the compost bin, despite understanding that it’s better than the alternative. We’re about to undergo the annual anti mite deep clean too. Diotamaceous Earth city.
We are currently in the midst of our third heatwave of the year, and all of the chickens are running about with their ‘vents open’ (a db-ism that means they have their wings slightly apart from their body) and the darker birds are panting a lot. Thankfully they have a lot of tree cover and plenty of dust baths to keep cool. We are not quite so lucky in the hut with consistent thirty plus degrees despite open windows, closed curtains and a fan. We are living in linen and as few clothing items as possible.
Making the most of the crazy temperatures, our tomatoes are having a fantastic time. As our greenhouse was destroyed in a storm last year, and our polytunnel the year prior, I have been trying to find native, heritage variety seeds to grow that will withstand our harsh and changeable weather outside, and the search has seemingly paid off, as 9 of our tomato plants have green fruit, and all of our squashes. I have sworn every year for three years that this is the year of the sweet pea, and this year it really is! They are vining beautifully along the trellis and we have had such bounty with our flowers this year that I was able to make a full sized bouquet for a friend who just graduated with her PhD. Four out of our Five roses have flowered, and our final one - of course the one about which I was most excited - is just about ready to pop, the David Austin Roald Dahl, gifted to me by a close friend in winter. I’ve started carrots four times this year with limited success, and our peas have not done well at all. Meadowsweet has taken over the patch beside our composter, but we’ve capitalised on this by picking and drying it for tea blends.
Yesterday we were able to harvest an entire basket of currants, and about two cups worth of gooseberries. Yarrow we started from seed is flowering and we are getting dozens of beans and a few cherries every other day. The Jerusalem Artichokes are now taller than DB, and our herbs have been absolutely dreamy so far, with particular props to the lemon balm grown back from last year, and the moroccan mint - a fantastic tea. I tried a new type of chamomile this year and find it (unfortunately) very perfumey compared to my usual seed. The grass in our winding little lane was cut while they were doing the field in front of us, and we let it dry in the sun to use as mulch and animal bedding - it’s much better quality and much lower waste than buying hay from a pet or feed store.
We turned our shower room into a dry pantry a few months ago, filling it with rice, beans, miso and condiments, and are (in the spirit of keeping it dry) unable to use it to shower with the portashower. We have instead been enjoying showering outside with the hose, and while most days it is warm, there have been a few days I have found it actually hot! The main issues are remembering to bring the soap in so it doesn’t melt, and hoping that no one arrives down the lane, or checks a neighbouring field, lest they get a bit of a shock in the form of a pasty white bum. Haha.
DB and I were fortunate enough to have a week off work together, and got plenty of rest time together, along with doing our quarterly declutter, where we hold things up and declare ‘IT’S A BOWL’ a la Diogenes, and put it either into the recycling box, donation box, or shed for later use. The house has since become much easier to keep clean, even moreso since the addition of our mini countertop dishwasher, which lives in the shed with our fridge. We also decided to buy a mini freezer to keep there too, as we get plenty of solar to run it in the summer, and don’t like preserving all of our fruit with copious amounts of sugar. This meant that a lot of our fruit last year went to family and friends, and still there was more than even the birds could eat.
Cow has made a full recovery and is back to playing outside each night. We know he’s doing better as Chicken (other cat) has gone back to batting him over the head every now and again when he annoys her. The birdsong is now much quieter, but we have been fortunate to watch a huge fleet of baby starlings flutter from the trees, to our fence, to the roof of the hut and back again for the past few days. All the baby birds at the moment are phenomenal, and we have also spotted juvenile robins, chaffinches and bullfinches.