Starting from number six there are five new photographs on the Photo Page.
Betty save the day by sending in over 60 photographs.
Chicken at our picnic table in Beamish Betty Canada.
Hay Rick at Beamish, is that a weather vane on top? Betty Canada.
Shark Hull Aquarium Betty Canada.
Emu eggs that I found.
Emu egg incubator warming up.
Teach me to keep my eyes open. At least every other day I have been walking all over the Emu Field looking for any eggs that they have laid since I found one a few weeks back. yesterday afternoon I walked the Field again and came across a nest tucked away in the far right hand corner of the Field partly covered with grass. How I missed the nest I will never know as there were 20 eggs in the nest. Trouble is that I don’t know how old the eggs are. You can keep the eggs for about 14 days before incubating them but some that I found may be a lot older. By the look of the eggs I would think that the eggs were laid by 3 or 4 different Emu.
Today we have been getting the incubator ready for the eggs. I was waiting for a couple more eggs before cleaning the incubator ready to set the eggs. It will need to be running for a couple of day to make sure that it is working properly as we have only just got the incubator and I am not to sure how they work yet. I cant complain as I was starting to think that we may not get many eggs this year after the moving the bird only six weeks ago.
Asbo has been doing his job. We started to incubate some of the eggs he has fertilised earlier this week. On checking them last night a lot of the eggs are fertile so in just over two weeks we will start hatching the eggs on the webcam. Just a bit shorter than the time that the Emu eggs will take to incubate of 56 days.
Thornton has been coming in a lot more. I think it may be something to do with the weather. The only time he doesn’t come in is when it is raining at the time he normally knocks on the door to come in, then he will spend the night in the barn with some of the other Sheep. Believe me Thorbton really does knock on the door. Normally three times. At times when I need to knocked on the Cottages doors they are not answered as people think that it is Thornton who is knocking.
Dennis has got very big. If it wasn’t that he is a pet he would be just about be the size of a Turkey that we would buy for Christmas, saving a lot of money. We have never eaten any of the animals that we have kept at Denbury. Ostrich meat is very tasty and low in cholesterol but after working with them we couldn’t eat any. The same with Wild Boar. I use to give the Piglets away once they were weaned. We just may just have one of our Lambs next year. We usually send them to Market but the last time that I put any in to be sold they only fetched a small amount and after the commissions I was sent an invoice. This year we have sent three to the abattoir, partly because of the little we got but also because we do not like to see the stress that the animals go through when sent to Market, we also never know just how far they will travel before getting to their final destination. Two that we had slaughtered were sold to two of our Holiday Guests,and one to friends. Although the Lambs didn’t look that big the Butcher said that they were very well finished and the meat did look very good. All three people who had them said the the meat tasted very good. Two said it was the best that they had ever eaten.