After having nothing to blog about for weeks last weekend we had a fairly awful time. Not exactly sure what wnet on but it looks like two doos that were on the gutter somehow got their legs trapped under the slates and damaged their legs quite badly. We think it was a combination of the legs becoming trapped and then Randy taking advantage of a trapped doo and bonking them senseless.
The first wee doo we rescued was DooDooRonRon and sadly her leg was so badly broken, her foot was hanging by a thread of tendon and she had lot so much blood, that we had no option but to gently cull her. The second doo was Pixie and I was able to paint her wound with iodine and she is doing OK, she hops about on one leg quite well and is eating and drinking.
The next day we again noticed a commotion and a third doo was in the same predicament, same place on the gutter so once more the ladder came out and Herb recued the doo, this one was DooDoo ( the second Lucian Doo to come a cropper) and she flew off but was having real problems. I was unable to get to her to deal with the le injury. I caught her one day but agin she escaped. She was spending a lot of time in the dove cote and was very quiet, so today I took the chance to have a look at her leg. As soon as I picked her up I smelt a dreadful smell and suspected a very bad infection but in fact on looking at the leg saw she had gangrene in the foot and leg and a fair way up to where the leg joins the body. Sadly she had to be culled as she would not have survived and must have been in terrible pain.
This is Pixies foot after the application of iodine. She is doing fine now.
The spring warmer weather has got their juices up and today I had to remove 5 more eggs from the nests and replace with china ones. I am hoping that we will have no babies all year but think that the doos may be wising up to me and we think that one doo may have started nest building in a bush.
The garden was looking great until we had some foraging deers pass by and they chewed the red curly kale down to stumps! I had not even tried any. Have prepared the beds for the arrival of the very expensive asparagus crowns any day now, will have to take precautions to make sure the deer do not fancy of this particularly tasty delicacy.
All my gardening is going to have to be done at the weekends now as I have got a job and start at the end of the month, goodbye to lovely long days in the garden in the summer, hello rat race!
