A ‘catch-up’ post.

Our December was busy and we tried to fit in plenty of fun too – picking out our Christmas tree was a highlight.  We love buying it from the Lion’s Club, a great group to support – and didn’t it look wonderful?

 

And it sported a special, new decoration – Pepper’s First Christmas – bought for us by the biggest girl J:

We spent a few days away at a little old shack on the Murray River.  We *loved* relaxing on the jetty and watching the world go by by catching up on some reading – definitely one of my favourite things!

We made a trip back to the boys’ scout group for our younger one to receive his Silver Boomerang J.  And we made a trip back to a ‘pick-your-own’ raspberry farm on our last day – seriously yum!!!

Then the day after we got back home, we picked up our new chookens J.  Our friend in town had hatched 7 Bantam Faverelles and we chose 3 – two hens and a wee rooster.  Then as we were leaving, our friend mentioned that they were maybe looking for a new home for “Miss Clucky” as she didn’t really fit in with their flock – so we brought her home too.  She is a Bantam Plymoth Rock and has gone from being bottom of the pecking order there, to top chook here!  As she is fully mature and already laying, we thought this would be the case, even though our chooks, being standard size, are already bigger than her.  

We did what we could to get them used to each other to ease the transition and after a week, we let them roam together for an hour before bedtime, then the next day did the same thing but let them roost the night together and they are not too bad now.  She is still picking on the rest a bit and they are very wary of her, so we hope she will settle more when our girls are mature in a month or so.  The babies (the Bantam Faverelles) we also introduced the same way, but we keep them in their own sleeping cage.   Yesterday, the littlest one, Sunflower, had some pecks on her head, so we also kept them separate yesterday and today – poor little mites do get picked by 5 of the others, “Miss Clucky” and “Fred” seem to tolerate them well.