fionaj

I hope someone can help me with my mysterious behaviour. I have a small flock of turkeys, 6 females and 2 males (father and son) last year all was well on the turkey front the male, Snoodles, did the business and I had lots of chicks.  I kept a male from last years chicks as a 'just in case' something happened to Snoodles, as we live in a very romote area and finding turkeys is extremely difficult.  This year all was going well Snoodles was up to the task and eggs were being laid, then he had an accident and broke his foot, the foot has healed reasonably well although he has a pronounced limp he was still doing his job, displaying and doing all the 'man things'. I treated him with medication at the time of injury but no treatment for the past 6 weeks. The other stag Mr Whitey started to fight with Snoddles sensing weakness I supoose so the stags were split up and have access to the females seperately.  Now here is the oddity, Mr Snoodles a fine handsome chap has taken to sitting on eggs  and brooding chicks at the expense of everything else including food!!! He seems to have lost his male role in life and has no interest in the ladies other than discussing childcare!!  Has anyone ever known this to happen before? Will Snoodles become again the sexy beast he once was? Should I be doing something to help him regain his libido? Could he be going through a sex change?  Any help on the subject would be much appreciated as Snoddles is my main man and favorite pet out of all the poultry.

Londoneye You seem to have sorted your food problem out so thats good news, I shall try to help with the fear problem. It doesn't really matter what animal or thing frightened him what you need to know is that you are now dealing with a terrified being. What comes across from your post is that the cat trusts you implicitly, quite a complement! Have you thought that he may have been attacked whilst doing his ablutions, which is why he needs you to stand guard whilst he is at his most vunerable. So all things considered he needs to get his confidence back, so one of the easiest ways to do this is to priase him for not showing fear. Maybe you could try moving the litter tray just outside the front door, or have a second one outside (put some used cat litter in it) If you see him using the tray outside praise him for being a clever lad and eventually you could move it further and further away and you start to move away from him as well, over a period of time he should gain his own confidence, and not rely on you to give him feelings of security. I do think it is lovely though that he thinks so highly of you. It may take some time and it is very early days in a foriegn country when all the other animals speak French!! So just take him one step at a time. Hope all goes well Fiona

Due to my daughters return to the UK, I am looking for a new home for 2 Connermara X ponies, as I am tooo big to ride them. A little bit about them, they were due to go to the abbatoir 2 years ago when the gelding was only 6 months old!!! My daughter has backed both ponies and the mare who is 4 years old is broken to a saddle and bridle, although she is very green. The mare Yaris is a strawberry roan, approximately 13.2ish hands, 4 years old and is a lovely temprement with no vices. The gelding is a 2 year old bay and is at present approx 12 hands, Both the ponies have no vices, live out all year are good 'doers' have been wormed regularly and are good with the farrier. We have a varied range of other animals and the ponies are good with them all including pigs. They would suit an experienced owner who would be able to bring them on. If anyone is interested I have plenty of pictures and I am only looking to cover the cost of keeping them for the last 2 years. Fiona

I have been entertaining the thought of keeping bees, I had a tiny bit of experience in England but never thought about it seriously until now. I live in a very rural, natural area of France, I was concerned if I set up a hive or two, there wouldn't be enough food for them unless I was to give them food artificailly which I don't want to do. There are no arable crops in this area, the nearset wood is some 2 km away and we have no neighbours so few cultivated flowers to feed on. Would there be sufficient food for bees in this area? All advice gratefully recieved Fiona

Hi JJ I am a qualified and very experienced dog trainer, although not in department 17 you can come and stay and we can do intensive work together. I could also help if you have a particular problem with the dog via e-mail etc. Check out the website for more info. If you need any help or advice I would be willing to help. All the best Fiona

Hello S & S I know this is a long time after you posted your request for information, I have not long been a member and thought i would clarify why your ducks were behaving the way they were. ANY poultry, albeit ducks chickenss etc will always peck at a RED region, it is the colour rather than being mean or crule that evokes the pecking. This behaviour is often seen in baterry hens, hence the owners of the sheds de-beak to try to elliviate the problem. There are several main thoughts on why birds peck at those less fortunate, one train of thought was that, as the baldy bird has no feathers to protect the area it would quickly bcome infested with fly strike so the companion animals are doing the injured bird a favour. I am not completely happy with this train of thought. As bald birds are generally lousy other birds are pecking at the lice and just catch the skin, since the area becomes red the pecking increases. Once the area is pink (having removed the lice) the birds no longer peck the area. Seen this in action. The other  one I have experience for myself, is, it is the colour that stimulates other birds to peck. I had a duck that was mauled and plucked by a dog, after several days of intensive care the duck rallied and made the decision to leave ICU and join her companions. Obviously she was very sore and very Red, the other ducks started pecking at her red areas, making them bleed. So i sprayed all her red bits with antiseptic blue spray, when ever the red started to show through, i would repeat the process. None of the other birds pecked the areas. She healed fine and became known as Mrs Blue. She produce 21 ducklings in one brood last year so well worth the effort.

Hi Mojo I have loads of fertile eggs, in fact they are begining to come out of my ears!!! The cockrels are Light Sussex, 30 hens are also Sussex with 16 brown hybrid type, possibly warren x Isa brown, you would be very welcome to have some.   I could possibly post them if you wanted to pay the postage Fiona

Hi Miggimeggi Thanks for your comments I to thought it a very high percentage, as they are the experts I had to believe them, maybe it was said to try to frighten me into having the shots, who knows. with hindsight i think i would have prefered to have taken my chances! I was doing what you try to do also, I had just removed the wee thing from the jaws of a not so friendly moggi, and straight after biting me the little treasure droped dead, everyone said i had poisoned it, who knows, maybe I did. Getting back to the point though, i was trying to say that allergic reactions can happen from rabies shots and that the consequences can be very serious, thus giving Val more information on which to form her own opinions and decisions. All the best Fiona

Hi Val I am really sorry to hear about your cat. What i am about to say may upset your plans to return him to England, sorry. 18 years ago i was living in a high rabies area of Germany and got bitten by a mouse (90% of mice carry rabies) so I had to undergo a series of rabies shots. To cut a long story short, on the 3rd vaccination i had a serious localized reaction with some neurological involvement, pretty much what you described for your cat, I then had a further shot 1 month later that was to cause every symptom of rabies except for the hydrophobia. I was hospitalized for 5 days and treated with large doses of antihistamines as well as other drugs. The national rabies centre was contacted in England and blood samples sent to them, the outcome being I had hyposensitivity to the rabies vaccine, any further vaccinations would probably result in my death.  Following my recovery, I researched everything on the vaccinations, and there were 2 types that were either live or dead vaccines. I was treated with the live one which resulted in my problem, although now that I am hyposensitive to Rabies in general I can not have either.  I think you have should find out if the vaccines used on your cat contained the live or dead organism. Then contact DEFRA and ask there advice, maybe your vet will supply a covering letter to aid your case. I believe that so long as your cat has antibodies (the titre test) he should be covered to return, (having said this, it is just me thinking sensibly, Government agencies don’t always think that way!) without his yearly boosters, but this is something that you would have to check with Defra. You could also ask them whether they would except homeopathic vaccines, but I doubt it.  I am very sorry the news isn’t more encouraging, but you have got a year to research, read, contact the authorities etc and then you can at least make a fully informed decision on the way forward.  I wish you all the best Fiona   

Hi Catherine Firstly let me say, I think you are really courageous, to open up yourself and your work to the opinions of others. I am glad that the comments of other folk have been both useful and constructive. Bravo! I also live in Burgundy and am developing my own business,  I am also suffering the same problems as yourself. I think that although this area is perfect for our respective enterprises, it lacks ‘holiday pulling power’ we have no beaches etc that holiday makers generally want, which makes it difficult to attract Mr and Mrs Jo Public, Coming from this perspective, I polled a lot of acquaintances in the same or similar fields of work or hobby as myself and asked them which publication they bought or read. This then gave me a top 2 publications in which to invest my hard earned cash! Maybe you could try something similar, I noticed several replies naming specialist publications, choose wisely and it could well be worth the expense.  I noticed payrac man was telling you how to raise your ranking on Google, beware the advice he gave about text in the same background colour. This is well known as Spamdexing in the search engine world, It may well get you to no1 on Google but if it is discovered then your site will be banned for life….um maybe not a wise decision. The only ‘Proper’ way is to optimise your site, you can buy tools from the internet to do this or you could go down the same road as myself and hire someone to optimise your site. The chap I use is Fabdabby dozey he has taken my site from 7694 (un-findable basically) in Goggle to page 2 number 20 in just less than a month and the enquiries have started to come in. He also guarantees his work and you only pay a very small deposit and the balance when you are in the top 20. As you said it is your main form of advertising investing a little now could reap huge rewards.  If you want more info or I can help in any other way you can PM me or contact me through my web page: http://www.self-sufficiency4u.org  maybe we could meet up if your are not too busy for further idea bouncing sessions or a good old moan over coffee!!  All the very best Fiona

Juswunderin How I love your name!! Thanks for the info I had never been to their site before but it's good, so I may even be ordering, a result! Cheers Fiona

Gail Thanks ever so much for your information I have been put off by Ascotts postage prices, but i will give them a go now! Have you tried their sausage mixes too? We generally only do dry cure, although we have tried wet curing I prefer the firmness of the dry cure. I would love to smoke my bacon, but unfortunately I haven't got a smoker! I was a little retiscent about doing a Hugh F Wittingstall and shoving it down my chimney!! I am looking at ideas of building my own smoker if you have suggestions on that? Thanks again for the info Fiona

Some gite owners in our area do link with French immobliers to cater for house hunting guests particularly the Dutch contingent who have a long break over Christmas. The English I am told start looking for houses in earnest in February, so this could keep Gite owners busy all year round!

I have recently bought both towels and bedding particularly duvets and pillow cases to fit my English pillows from Ikea, they are of good quality at a reasonable price. Has any other gite owner noticed the ridiculous prices of cotten bed linen in French supermarkets?

I am a new member to this forum and thought I would introduce myself. I moved to department 58 with my mother and husband,18 months ago with a dream to be totally self-sufficient. Up untill now the road has had both positive and negative aspects, but we wouldn't change the relaxed way of life we have found here in france. Although we love the French food we still have yearnings for typical English food and this year I cured all my own bacon and hams, from our totally free range pigs but have hit on a problem which I hope someone out there can help me with: Where can you purchase SALT PETRE in France? This apparently helps the pork to retain a nice pink colour during the curing process but alas all my searches have been in vain. We also had great fun making our own English black puddings and cumberland sausages, so we now have the best of both worlds living in France with all the perks that that entails and the good old english breakfast!! wow ecstasy. We would like to meet other like minded folk living in France with a view to swoping recipes and animal tips etc. We have our own website if anyone fancies having a look at our farm the address is: http://www.self-sufficiency4u.org All the best to all the members for 2006 Fiona