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This is Smokey.

Smokey has been with us for quite some time and arrived about a month after the very sad death of his predecessor Moochie (or Stitch to give his official title). Smokey is very sociable, friendly and annoying when he wants feeding. We actually got him just before Halloween 2012 and he delighted the guests at our Halloween party by hanging around and looking like a witches cat.Smokey is a very good mouser! He regularly brings a mouse back and announces his return from the hunt with the loudest meow he can muster, which isn't much to be honest. At least he tries and is finally proving my original promise to Joanna when persuading her we should have one that "cats are useful"

We are now back to four chickens, having increased the flock to eight. The remaining chooks are Biscuit and Chucky Egg from the original four and Phantom and Mimi from the second four. The others have died of various ailments, despite our best efforts, but the current four appear to be doing very well and looking extremely healthy. We suffered a lot of feather pecking but that now seems to have passed and Phantom, who was by far the worst victim, now has all of her feathers back! They are laying one or two eggs a day so egg sales have temporarily ceased. We may invest in more production operatives in the summer to get us back on track for the egg sale induced early retirement plan.........

 

Pond life continues as before. We had a successful batch of Moorhen chicks last spring and the parents then had another late batch from which just one chick survived. This was very exciting as we were able to witness the fully grown "teenagers" feeding their new fluffy sibling - very sweet to see. At the moment the moorhen clan is living in the field during the day and coming back to the pond at night and fighting over the one useable duck-house. The second is temporarily out of commission whilst I repair the ramp.

 

Our usual pair of ducks returned today. The bread thrown out of the kitchen window was left by the male for the female until there was only one piece left. This he picked up and carried in his beak (well yes I agree - how else was he going to carry it?) until she decided that she wanted that as well and proceeded to help herself from his beak!! She is now nestled down on the bank and he would appear to have taken up guard duty at the bottom of the one working ramp. Job for tomorrow then - get the waders on, get in the freezing water and fix the ramp. Oh well, its a ducks life isn't it.....

The Moocher R.I.P.