Marcus is now 4 yrs old!!!

He had his birthday on Tuesday and unfortunately I spent a lot of the day trying to sort out Amanda the chook I'd rescued starving to death, she came through the moult and had a beautiful new coat of feathers but had gone off colour for about a week, having just lost Becky to having been off colour, I grabbed her out of one shelter and was instantly covered in mites, oh my god, it was gross she was COVERED in them! I doused her with sulphur powder and then some surface fly spray to top her off (she wasn't going to be grooming herself so figured that was safe) and put her in the dog crate on her own. A couple of hours later she was on her side. Mites were just everywhere! Syringed some food and water down her and a couple of hours later she died. Unfortunately stupid stupid me syringed her to damn hard and I drowned her, evidenced when she died and exhaled egg and water :o(

I had her inside with me by then and was just plugging in the bioptron (have heard green light helps with fleas etc) but never got a chance to test it.

So now I need to find out where the mites are!!! have the powder to treat the girls even though I've checked another 3 of them over and found nothing, maybe Amanda took them all with her!

So it was a very sad day for me my poor girl died by my hand after she'd come back from the edge already...

But Marcus loved his day anyway, had chocolate cake with candles in it, he hates cake but loved the candles part and Pete and I loved the cake so all good!

Smokey has another dressage competition next weekend, two level 1 tests to do this time so worked on his canter tonight, not too bad once he stopped being frisky LOL.

And lo and behold while collecting eggs today I found a dwarf chook!!! She must be about a year old now and it's the first time I've ever seen her! I asked the boss about her and he only saw her for the first time about a month ago so I asked if I could have her, her face is just so "pretty". Everything on her is just small, although some of the photo's of her trying to look out the top of the nesting box when I lifted the lid makes her neck look like a giraffe! Amazing how they can stretch!

So here is Pet, the newest addition to the mad chook lady's flock LOL