Its best in the West...hot and sunny.

Its not often too hot here to gather the sheep and deal with their feet etc but today was too hot for sheep and Shepherds. Its been a good day for idling in the shade.......people and animals who work in the sun tend to sit in the shade.

Its a fallacy that ducks like rainy days, they enjoy sunbathing , up to a point, then when it gets too much they dive for cover, its all that down.and feathers I suppose. They, the ducks seem to have been taunting the goslings who are still penned up during the day. This is just until they become habituated to their new house and will go back in a night. Don't forget the pine martens, mink, foxes and sea eagles.

The goslings at four weeks are as big as the three month old ducks but not yet big enough to fend for themselves so they are locked up with everything else at sunset.

Four ducklings of unknown breeding hatched under a broody hen on Monday. They were started off in the incubator then set under the hen once she was sitting well. You slip the warm eggs under the hen in the evening as you take away the "pot" eggs she has been sitting on. She only had to sit for two weeks, the incubator did half the job.

This is much easier than fiddling with incubators and infra red heat lamps. Next year I might rear everything naturally under broody hens. You can programme them to go broody. Just leave a few eggs in the nest-box and they soon get the idea. If they see another hen with chicks that gets the hormones flowing too; they are soon sitting tight, ruffling their feathers and pecking your hand when you put it under them.

Embden goslings sunbathing