Monday 16th May 2011 - weather: warm but overcast

It seems my computer is still playing silly buggers, but whilst I can, I thought I would give those interested in my ramblings a quick animal update.

We have invested in 6 mature quail hens to boost our flock. We now have 16 birds and it looks like only one is a male, and he is a rampant boy packed full of testosterone. There is a little bickering in the flock, but I know from last year, this settles, or else the most spitefull quickly become oven ready. Of course, no photos, but I shall correct this over the next couple of days. We have an array of colours from range to fawn to white. We also have 7 fertile bobwhite eggs in the incubator. They take longer to hatch that the Japs and Italian so we have had to do some research. Should be interesting. Egg count so far, only 3. One pure white, one with colour only on it's top and bottom and one healthy speckled egg.

As most of you know, we are the proud owners of 2 new tortoises, Tom and Bertha. They needed a new home that they could ransack, and we have just the spot. They have they whole top end of the garden to call their own, an area put down to bark, grass and paving and has several flower beds and lots of hiding places and they can stomp around and watch the quail in the quailarium if they like. Tom is rampant, another male in the house with a big ole hairy chest, strutting around like Tarzan. Poor Bertha must get a headache from the shell bonking, so we have made lots of obstacles for her to hide behind, and there are several mature shrubs that she can sneak into. They have settled into their wooden home and put themselves to bed every evening as the sun goes in. They will have eaten every dandelion in the neighbourhood, and per instructions, they get regular feeds of softly cooked broccoli and cauli. We also have Travis, our hermans who is now spending all day out with the loving couple, but he comes in at night as he is a softy and lives under lights in a tropical atmosphere.

And here are our other 2 scaley friends. Leccy is a Bearded Dragon and Crystal is a Corn snake. We have had these two characters for approaching 4 years. Leccy should eat plenty of greens along with his locust, but, typical of this family, he refuses anything that contains any vitamins and only scoffs the crunchy insects so we have to make sure they are well fed.
Crystal devours whole mice, nice. She is beautiful and is now 3 foot long, very slender and very soft.

We also have a guinea pig, Pebbles, who is incredibly grumpy and an array of fish, tropcial indoors (2 oscars, 5 silver dollars and a plethera of small community fish) and a pond full of goldfish, frogs and newts. Apart from the guinea, no cuddly pets. I like them scaley or feathered personally, although I fear I will have to give in eventually as the pressure is on to get a dog. Groan.