Lousy news

The summer house new bed is looking a treat now, all the sweet peas have climbed almost to the top of the obelisk and the lavenders are in full bloom. I am regretting putting in the large leaved Inula now but will haul them out at the end of the season and replace with something more fitting in blue or pink, must have been having a blonde day when I thought Inula Giganticas in orange would fit in well with lavenders and pinks.

Daisy has been off colour for a while now and has stopped laying eggs and so I decided to take a close look at her with my glasses on. She may have stopped laying eggs but some buggers had not and she was infested with Poultry Biting Lice and their eggs. It was positively foul ( excuse the pun ) seeing her crawling with parasites. It is all a bit like when the kids used to come home with 'little visitors', nothing to be ashamed about and I have heard that Poultry Lice only like clean feathers. Ha Ha! Anyway I right away inspected the rest, that was no easy matter. Poppy was fine and Trinny and Susannah calm down nicely when caught but the Veras revert to Hezbollah and Hammas mode when cornered. In the end Trinny had a few, none on Susannah and a few on Poppy and none on the Veras, would they dare! Well, like when one of the boys got nits in the long distant past, one gets treated so do the rest. This has consisted of all of them being liberally doused in louse powder, the house being deep cleaned and then all the hens being sprayed with mite and louse spray. I was told that the easiest way to delouse a chicken was to fill an old pillowcase with said powder, put the hen in up to its neck and then hold it tight around its neck while massaging all its bits with powder. Easier said than done again! I chose to do Daisy first as she was definitely the worst affected but by the end I was covered in louse powder as the weave on the pillow case allowed a lot of leakage and worse I had crawlers on me to and in my hair, having just shelled out £89 to have my highlights and a cut I was none too happy at having to wash all the hours of professional blow drying out but like a trooper I did. It was a little later that I read on the Omlet Forum that these lice are host specific and would have got bored with me after a while and dropped off. Better safe than sorry I say. I decided to take another tack with the rest of the flock and I caught them one at a time and deposited them into a sand pit which contained about 50/50 sand and louse powder, it was much easier to massage it into the right bits and some of them seemed to enjoy it. Not either of the Veras though who protested long and hard, I am surprised none of the neighbours called the SSPCA. After the girls were done it was time to deep clean the house, this was scrubbed, pressure washed and liberally doused with something called Poultry Shield which kills all known bugs, creepy crawlies and other nasties. Then I sprayed the house with another type of louse killer for good measure.

This morning as the girls got up and left the house I could be seen at the door of the hen house spray in hand, giving each of them ,as the exited another spray for good measure. I will repeat all the aforementioned next weekend again and hopefully we will have rid ourselves of them for the time being.

The doves are being very well behaved and I have no idea if they have lice or not , I can get to the doocote when they are on it to replenish their feed and water but handling them is some way off yet. For good measure the cote got a spray of poultry shield and light dusting of mite powder, can't be too careful.

Now Herb has built a bridge he is starting on a wonderful lean to shed of mammoth proportions in the cattle court. It will be for storing logs and straw and may even contain a manger or two. It is going to be magnificent.

Everything else in the garden is rosy. We sat on our new bridge one sunny evening and christened it the Five O'clock Bridge with a glass of bubbly or two, or three but certainly no binge drinking.