Weekend

Papa and I took Old Boy to the vet yesterday as we noticed his right eye was a tad swollen. We've got some ointment to put on it, but its a tad difficult. But I must admit, far easier to administer than a pill down his throat. I took Speedy's eggs last night and geez she was not happy with me. I figured it was because it was dark and she couldn't see it was me. But we're greedy and want eggs at the moment so I had to take them.

Everyone else is fine, he is Tommy with Miss Muffet looking for banana scraps under a mandarin tree. Tommy appears to be in the middle of telling her something pretty important.

I've discovered Miss Muffets favourite food. Its a breakfast snack made out of weet bix called Curios. Personally I think they taste like round bits of hard cardboard with a lick of sweet berry flavour but Miss Muffet thinks they are the best things ever. She snatches them out of my hand and gobbles them up, its pretty cute.

Slim Ralphy

"Guess who's back

Back again.

Ralphys back

Tell a friend"

How hot is Ralphy - posing on a knife?

Ralphy is scabbing so much food at the moment so I think Ralphetta is nesting as I haven't seen her. The bad news for him is that he's knocking on the door of a vegetarian household so he doesn't really get the food that he likes. Turns out Ralphy doesn't really like rice cakes.

Ta da

How cool does this look? This is one dough and it fits just perfectly. I went to the markets today and I'm pretty sure I'm going to start a pasta business. Fancy that - me an entrepreneur and starting a market stall. Markets and stall owners used to be my nemesis, but now due to my love of organic donuts I've found a way to attend them.

Black Pearl

I was buoyed by the sales of my duck pasta going through the roof at the larder and I've decided to turn pro. I went and purchased myself a wizz bang pasta drying rack. Its a little over the top and I'm yet to work out how much it will actually dry but it looks shit hot.

I told papa that I was turning pro and I'm just a few steps away from starting up my own duck pasta stall at the markets. I told him I'm going to need to get more ducks.

Thanks to Emma, I've totally gone gourmet. I purchased the rack from her work http://www.blackpearl.com.au/

Butter Chicken

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I feed Speedy butter. Its when I get scraps in from the cafe and there sometimes happens to be a portion of butter in there. And she loves it. I'm thinking that's why her feathers are so soft and beautiful. None of the other chickens have feathers like her. The photos above would have been perfect had she actually been looking at me, but not my little chicken. She'll do what she wants to do, when she wants to.

We sold a few serves of my Miss Muffet pasta yesterday at the cafe and one gentleman proclaimed it was the best meal he'd ever eaten. I was pretty pleased with that, I'll be sure to pass on the encouragement to Miss Muffet and Lady.

Also, the ducks liked swimming in the pond. I picked Miss Muffet up off her nest and took her over there and then I sort of ushered Tommy in there. Now that they know its there (and clean) I'm sure they will be swimming about in no time.

Sunbaking

Here's Old Boy sunning himself on Saturday. I noticed he was losing his balance a bit this morning when I let him out so I'll keep a mega close eye on him today.

Papa fixed the duck pond yesterday, the ducks are yet to discover it though. I look forward to taking some photos of them splashing about in the clean water. I took Miss Muffet's one egg this morning, so she's off sulking. No doubt she'll find the pond tomorrow.

Lady Pasta

Ralphy has been hanging out a lot at the ranch lately. We think he must be nesting with some new baby Ralphys on the way so he's needing more food. Its been great having him back and he still manages to impress us with with "g'day mate" and barking like a dog.

We made duck egg pasta on Sunday for the cafe. It was a great experience and the first time I've done it since the baby girls died at the beginning of the year. So if you're near the larder soon, get on down there and try some Miss Muffet and Lady pasta. Miss Muffet has decided to nest on one egg. When I get home later today I'm going to take it. Speedy is also laying eggs, she's been laying eggs in the shed which the chickens aren't aloud in. I turn a blind eye though. Yesterday Papa was telling me that he saw Speedy go into the shed and couldn't find one of her two nests of eggs so she came back out of the shed and just started attacking all of the chickens. To that I responded, "Speedy's a real firecracker".

I took some great photos of Old Boy sleep in in the sun on Saturday. I'm yet to upload them, but I will do some later today. I think me and Papa are going to take him back to the vet to get a check up on his eye. It seemed a little puffier than normal and I'm pretty sure he's blind. Maybe he needs an optometrist and not a vet.

Name day

I found a black hen really getting into a dirt bath underneath the lemon tree today. Everything was fine until I realised she had found Blondy Bears grave and was having a dirt bath on top of him. Poor Blondy Bear, he's still not getting any rest even in his death.

I've been thinking of names to name Speedy's babies. I'm so proud of her, she gave us two hens. Out of the eight babies from the other slut there are 6 roosters and 2 hens. I was thinking about keeping the name in the Arrested Development strain and naming them Lindsey and Maybe. But I'm not totally sold on that one. Any suggestions? Perhaps I'll take a photo of them and maybe you'll get inspired.

Best in show

I went to the Ekka yesterday and visited the poultry on show. At first I was excited to see all of the ducks, chickens, cocks, turkey and geese but then I got a little upset they were all in these really small pens. The roosters were going off crowing, the ducks were honking and in general it smelt like shit. I think there must have been over a 1000 birds in this pavilion. I had originally planned on taking some photos of the prize winning Muscovy but you know what. Miss Muffet is clearly the prettiest duck ever, she would have won hands down. Only I wouldn't want my ducks in a little cage on display like that.

The male Muscovy ducks that one in the 'heavy division' where clearly much bigger than Tommy and would have ripped his head off should they ever met. These drakes looked all rough and dirty with their feathers broken - like how my boys used to be. Tommy now looks so white and clean.

Duck Therapy

I met someone on Saturday who explained to me that she believed in a thing called 'Duck Therapy'. The funny thing is I hadn't even mentioned my ducks. I try to keep my ducks and my blog out of general conversation at music festivals.

So I learnt all about this "therapy" which just involves watching ducks for their calming effect. As I told her tonight I feel like the dice man, like I've been practising this all along but now it has a name. So now when I stop working and go outside and play with the animals I'm actually doing something constructive, I'm having a little 'duck therapy' time.Lady has been laying eggs and now has a nest in appears to be nesting. Her nest is in one of the bread baskets which was fallen down a little because its not used to the weight of a duck. I don't think she'll be there long as I'll take her eggs soon. I was told that duck eggs are great for cooking sponge cakes. Now if only I had an oven.

Speedy has finally ditched her kids. I'm impressed she lasted this long.

Speedy vs Brown Bitch

I let the brown bitch out of the pen with her babies this morning. It didn't last long though as Speedy attacked her. Speedy was really getting into it with her I had to separate the two of them. I ended up picking Speedy up and trying to calm her down (which didn't really work as she wasn't listening to me) and pen her in the chicken pen until I locked Brown hen and her babies up again.
I'll let brown bitch out in another few days, but not at the same time as when I let everyone else out. Perhaps then Speedy wont fight with her. I'm not even sure why they were fighting.