So..... to start the year, we've had exceptional flooding with rainwater overflowing from the sewers back into our and our neighbours' drains. This lasted from 7th January and finally completely subsided by 13th January. Our water services provider, Thames Water, took note of my daily call to log the situation and explained that the rain had put extra pressure on their drains and they were doing all they could about the 'hydraulic overload', but there was nothing they could actually do to alleviate my situation.
The situation was unusual for us in as much as when we've had previous incidents of this rainwater overflow/spillage from the drains, it has usually gone down within 12-24 hours. And, our neighbours' drains may overflow a little, and drain off into our garden. But this time the garden was awash for four and a half days, which meant that the hens thought they were ducks, and I'm not sure what impact the effluent will have had on the vegetable patch, or the health of my birds. Needless to say, I'm on their case, and my County Councillor called me today (thanks Zoe) to see if Thames Water had called me back after she'd contacted them on my behalf (they hadn't).
So.... here's what we had to contend with, for over 4 days, in the hen patch...
Two weeks down the line, and one of the hens has gone into a serious moult. Which was unusual because they'd both moulted November/December ready for the winter. The third week of January is not a good time to moult. Now, the question is, was the floodwater contamination somehow responsible for the hen moulting again, or was it entirely a coincidence?
This is her today. Actually, she'd lost most of the feathers at the weekend, so you can see the re-growth starting, and it took me a while to think of a solution... and with a few clicks on a certain search engine I found some instructions to make...
Can you guess? It took around 4 hours. Well, it's been a long time since I'd knitted anything. I found some wool I'd got in my 'projects' corner, and following the instructions from 't'internet' I started Tuesday evening, did some on Wednesday morning, and finished it off today.
Here's 'Brownie' modelling this year's winter collection hen jacket - seen in all the best hen runs around the land.
This is not a joke. There's a cold snap coming, so I hope she feels the benefit. I won't go into detail about trying to catch a hen single-handed (I've usually got one or two children to help me herd them into a corner), but she made me have it for a while, and then I had to catch her a second time as she'd pecked and pulled and managed to undo one of the buttons to try to free herself of this unseemly contraption.... so the second time I went in armed with safety pins.... ha!
Ah me. It's all happening here.
Nighty night. Kat.
The situation was unusual for us in as much as when we've had previous incidents of this rainwater overflow/spillage from the drains, it has usually gone down within 12-24 hours. And, our neighbours' drains may overflow a little, and drain off into our garden. But this time the garden was awash for four and a half days, which meant that the hens thought they were ducks, and I'm not sure what impact the effluent will have had on the vegetable patch, or the health of my birds. Needless to say, I'm on their case, and my County Councillor called me today (thanks Zoe) to see if Thames Water had called me back after she'd contacted them on my behalf (they hadn't).
So.... here's what we had to contend with, for over 4 days, in the hen patch...
Two weeks down the line, and one of the hens has gone into a serious moult. Which was unusual because they'd both moulted November/December ready for the winter. The third week of January is not a good time to moult. Now, the question is, was the floodwater contamination somehow responsible for the hen moulting again, or was it entirely a coincidence?
This is her today. Actually, she'd lost most of the feathers at the weekend, so you can see the re-growth starting, and it took me a while to think of a solution... and with a few clicks on a certain search engine I found some instructions to make...
Can you guess? It took around 4 hours. Well, it's been a long time since I'd knitted anything. I found some wool I'd got in my 'projects' corner, and following the instructions from 't'internet' I started Tuesday evening, did some on Wednesday morning, and finished it off today.
Here's 'Brownie' modelling this year's winter collection hen jacket - seen in all the best hen runs around the land.
This is not a joke. There's a cold snap coming, so I hope she feels the benefit. I won't go into detail about trying to catch a hen single-handed (I've usually got one or two children to help me herd them into a corner), but she made me have it for a while, and then I had to catch her a second time as she'd pecked and pulled and managed to undo one of the buttons to try to free herself of this unseemly contraption.... so the second time I went in armed with safety pins.... ha!
Ah me. It's all happening here.
Nighty night. Kat.
You didn't do the jacket justice over the marmalade chat!
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