It has taken EE over 4 weeks to get us an internet connection, but we still have no land line. We have been allocated a number but the phone is as dead as a door nail.
Anyway, we are in our new little house in Cinderford. If anybody is in the near, you would be more than welcome to visit, if you can get through the door for cardboard boxes! We are still in an absolute jumble with unopened boxes sometimes up to our shoulders, where the removal men just dumped them, and a back garden full of timber, cement mixers, wheelbarrows, parts of pigeon lofts, and more boxes!
At least we have been able to get our stock birds sorted out. When we came, there were two apex-roof sheds bolted back to back. I have fixed the roof and stopped it leaking on one of them, and that is where we have our stock birds.
Because most of them are new to us, and each other, we have been somewhat reluctant to give them free rein of the loft, because there are certain pairs which we definitely want to put together, so they have been paired up with centre divides in their nest boxes (the centre divide to stop them getting at each other but they can still coo and kiss if they wish). We kept them like that for a week and now have removed all centre divides.
Out of the 16 stock pairs we have, we only had two pairs that squabbled a little bit but all seem content now.
Our next mission is to open one or two next boxes and let the pairs find their place in the loft. Once the couple of pairs have found their way back to their box, we will let out another pair and so on. Hil had the idea of letting just one pair out during the day, and then put them back in at night, and then the next day try another one, the next day try a different pair, and so on, but that is going to take over a fortnight, and we are already very late regarding pairing for real.
Does anybody have any suggestions?
I see Ray posted a question about how members are getting on with pairing but I haven't had chance to read it yet. What is the general concensus of opinion?
We have been really ill since Boxing Day, in the end we had to give up trying to live in our camper, and rented a room in one of these motorway hotel/motels, and spent nearly 2 weeks in Michaelwood Service station on the M5, before moving in here. At least it was dry and warm, had television and internet, but finding decent food was quite difficult!
Since we have been here, I (Phil) have had the Rapid Response team here twice a day every day last week and once a day this week. I think they were on the verge of sending me to hospital, as I was running a temperature and could hardly breathe, and had absolutely no energy.
Poor Hil was nearly as bad with terrible coughing fits but she hasn't been so wheezy. We think we are just about getting over it now but have to go really steady until our energy levels come back. Consequently we haven't been able to unpack many boxes, and of course we cannot find anything! The removal men shifted 28 tons of stuff from our smallholding in France, and I think halfway through delivering it all, they got a bit pig-sick and just dumped stuff everywhere.
I think that's all for now. Trusting all our members have not suffered too much with the dreaded lurgy, and we would like to hear all your news.
Phil and Hil
Home 
Report a Stray 
Velocity Calculator 
Portal 2 
The N.E.H.U race from Melton Mowbray 21/4/2012 was won by Peel bros of South Shields, they took 1st club 1st fed, also taking 2nd and 4th club and 15 of the 25 birds clocked in the club......well done Peel brothers.
