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Ten Reasons Not to………

Ten reasons not to kill a turkey.

1. He might put on a pound or two if we wait another week.
2. We have visitors coming round this evening.
3. There won’t be time to finish the ‘processing’ before the Boy King comes home from school.
4. The dogs might get him.
5. We don’t need a roast this Sunday as we are going out.
6. He seems a bit happier, so maybe give him another week.
7. The chickens will miss him.
8. It might be better to start with something smaller, like a chicken.
9. We haven’t done enough research.
10. The neighbours said they would help, and they are out at the moment.

I’m sure you have gathered by now, that Pew Pew the turkey is still with us, he has been given a reprieve until Monday - for all the above reasons. I will report back next week.

Our egg production has reduced dramatically lately, so we decided to investigate and came up with the answer that it must be a large rat.

There is obvious new digging within the chicken’s enclosure and a week or so ago I found an almost whole empty egg shell with all the contents sucked out just lying in the run.

Now, I am a complete coward when it comes to spiders, but rodents – no problem. So I decided to flush out the culprit and see who we were dealing with.

A full watering can proved useful and after emptying half of it into a big hole under the hen house I found a damp, cross looking rat staring me in the face. Not having thought the whole thing through I was rather taken aback, but pleased to see it scurry off away from the chickens.

The next thing I knew the rat was back, down the hole and straight out again with a small pink baby in her mouth. That’s when it got to me, she might have been stealing our eggs, but only because she was feeding her babies. It’s what any of us would do if we had to.

I felt bad, but hopefully she will find a new home - away from our chickens.

As for the chickens we are raising to eat, they are about 3 months old now and we were told that they will lay a few eggs if encouraged. So I have started to feed them layers pellets and have made them a lovely comfy nesting box, I don’t know if that is the right thing to do but let’s see what happens.

Apparently, Jake and Nipper the dogs, should have a licence. We knew nothing about this until Miguel, the farmer, pointed it out to us. He told us that the GNR have been on the look out for unregistered dogs and will take them to the pound given half a chance. The fine to retrieve your dog is €50 plus the cost of the food they ate whilst in ‘custody’. So I think we have to bow, once again, to Portuguese bureaucracy and get a couple of licences first thing on Monday. However, this information was relayed back to me by CG who had just spent half an hour ‘chatting’ in his best Portuguese to Miguel who doesn’t speak or understand a word of English. So who knows what they were discussing…….