Back in the saddle.

So ...tomorrow I am back in school, though it is not a school I have been in before. It is a small school hear Will's Cheese Factory and I am taking the Prep to Year 2 class. There are 11 in the class!I emailed the school to ask about planning and was told that the teacher would email me but that she was actually away at the moment on a  Cruise!That is something that you would not hear of in the UK... A teacher taking time off mid term to go on a Cruise! But here, you see, you can get 'Long Service Leave' and take it when you want.I didn't expect to get any planning, if I am honest. Who would stop mid Cruise holiday to write some planning for a supply teacher? Not I.I spent the afternoon planning a day around the theme of Frogs...and that is unusual for me....not the Frog theme...but the planning.Will and I went out in the cool of the evening to try and find more of the boundary peg markers for the property here....we did some yesterday marking the boundary with strips of old sheet tied around trees....but we couldn't fimd the peg at the top of the hill. We got back just as Long-Mu and Wuji-Mu were heading back into their box as the Sun set...and lo and behold there was some planning for tomorrow waiting in my email box!Ah well, I will take the Frog stuff in case the day goes to pot!

Spring-y things.

So...as Spring gets older there is lots happening here at Frogknot. We have Kookaburra's nesting down near the loo and a Black Faced Cuckoo-Shrike at the edge of the treeline on the hill at the front of the house.I got the ladder and tried to take a pic of the baby kookaburras but as I peered in the hole I realised that the mother was in there with them so I backed off not wanting to scare her off.

Not so solitary confinement.

So...Long-mu spent the night alone in her box and this morning I let her out in the garden. She went straight over to the chicken run and the other hens came to the fence to see her. I relented and lifted her in with the others and she ignored them and went straight inside and into the nesting box with Dou-mu.One night in the box alone had not cured her so I lifted her out again. Where we put her box was too close to the pen and she could still hear Dou-mu's chicks calling so we have moved the box away from the house and we have put Wuji-mu in with her.

Solitary confinement.

So...our eight new chicks are doing well and Dou-mu is looking after them well. She took them outside today for the first time.Long-mu, however, is also broody and we have been removing her, many times, daily from the nesting box. I found her yesterday sitting on one of Dou-mu's chicks and today she was getting a little aggressive towards them in the chook shed, chasing after and pecking them.I waded into the shed and picked her up and carried her out but had nowhere else to put her safely so had to put her back in the pen.Using the box that 'Velociraptor' the chipper machine came in I made another cage this afternoon and Long-mu has been sent to Solitary Confinement.

Apparently removing broody hens from the pen for a few days into a box without straw but with food and water should cure them of their 'broodiness.'We will see.She was most indignant about the whole thing.

Supermoon.