Spuds in by Good Friday!

I managed to plant all the potatoes by Easter. Usually I like to plant a little earlier if possible (to get as much growth in before blight strikes, which seems to happen earlier each year) but the ground was simply too cold. Quite honestly I don't think it's quite warm enough yet, but growth will be rapid once we have a little more sun.

Garlic - Cledor

I don't usually bother planting spring garlic, as I find overwintered varieties get away to a better start in spring and bulk up more. However, someone gave me an unwanted pack of Cledor, and it will be interesting to compare the yields with the strongly-growing bed of Germidor  planted last Autumn.

No more parsnips!

I decided to dig up the remaining row of parsnips today, as they are beginning to come into growth, and I had a large stew in mind। I was shocked to find them all about an inch in diameter, and riddled with canker। The other rows of Gladiator F1 were also badly affected, but were so large that a normal amount of parsnip was still present in usable amounts.

I really don't know why they have been so badly affected, Gladiator is supposed to be very resistant, they weren't sown particularly early and historically we हवे ओनली हद मिनोर problems with canker. I haven't had a problem with carrot root fly on parsnips before, but wonder if this might account for the degree of damage. I will try a new site this year and see if this makes a difference.

despite what I said earlier...

... on impulse I bought some partridge silkie hatching eggs. Surprisingly all 12 were fertile and 10 hatched (using an Brinsea Octagon 10 incubator). One has curled toes, and had to wear sellotape and cardboard bootees for a couple of days, but is now walking fairly well, with just a little tape to hold the toes in place. 

Spuds for 2010

About the only thing I can be sure of in 2010 is that I will still be eating more potatoes than usual. If nothing else they are easy to maintain if I can't do the usual intensive daily horticultural routine.

This year's spuds are already beginning to sprout (Nicola is the worst), despite the recent cold weather so good winter dormancy is something I'll be looking for in addition to blight resistance. Lady Balfour has exceptional dormancy, in addition to overall suberb disease resistance, so I'll give this a go (helped in my decision by T&M offering free postage even on heavy items over xmas)

I'd already decided on Setanta as a replacement for Rooster, and again it supposedly combines good storage qualities with greater disease resistance than it's parent, but retaining a similar dry, floury texture (I hope...)

I might try a row of Nadine just for exhibition purposes, also perhaps Romano and Picasso so that all categories are covered (with the cup in mind). I'll save my own seed of Nicola too.

Miserable Christmas

I haven't posted for a long time, as food and the growing of food has been far from my mind. I've been suffering from a severe bout of mucositis, the cause of which has been diagnosed as Sjogren's syndrome. The effect of this is that I can hardly eat anything at all, as my tongue, gums and throat are raw and permanently covered in ulcers. My teeth ache and are horribly sensitive. No treatment has been forthcoming, or effective so far.

Never have I been so grateful for spuds, as mashed potato has been virtually all I can eat. I have been more or less bed-ridden from the fibromyalgia caused by the condition, and I'm not optimistic about if I'll be able to carry on doing heavy horticultural work.

The Last Silkie, RIP

I'm feeling really awful today. We had to cull our last silkie hen as it became clear today that she had Marek's disease.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that she appeared to have an eye infection. We brought her in and bathed her eyes in saline solution, and it became clear that the second eyelids were very inflamed/enlarged, and clearly painful. My immediate assumption was straightforward bacterial infection. However, nothing a "straighforward" bacterial infection in a silkie, as they cannot tolerate the antibiotics that are licensed for poultry. I've given Baytril to silkies twice before for foot injuries, both time the toxic effects of the drug killed the birds.

This time the vet was happy to prescribe a penicillin-based one that was safer. Unfortunately the only drug she could find in stock had to be administered by injection. Luckily, she was happy for us to do this at home, as bringing the bird in to the vets everyday would have been very stressful, not to mention prohibitively expensive.

The antibiotics did improve the eye irritation, and allow one to open, but the other second eyelid was still very enlarged. My gut feeling was that it was due to a tumour, having had the same thing happen in the past. In that case the tumour form of the disease developed very rapidly after an initial eye irritation, and the bird had painful sore-like tumours all the way down her throat when the vet investigated, as well as obvious lameness.

She had seemed quite happy until yesterday, when paralysis of the left leg and wing became obvious. We decided to cull her quickly, as the tumours can be very painful.

So passed what will probably be my last Silkie. Previously I had built up quite a sizeable flock of about a dozen, all healthy to that point, and blissfully unaware of their susceptibility to Marek's disease. Then I made the mistake of buying in three hens from a top exhibition breeder. Within days, one of the new birds had started twisting her head backwards. We brought her in, but the paralysis developed quickly. Then, one by one, all of my own birds started to show the same symptoms. I managed to hatch three eggs before the cockerel started his slow decline (cockerels exhibit slightly greater tolerance to the condition than hens), and vaccinated them at day old for Marek's, and kept them in isolation until they were six months old. All in vain.

So, I can't really face getting any more. They are lovely birds, they are so loving and affectionate to each other as a family group, they melt even the most unsentimental heart. Which makes having to cull them because of one of the worst diseases imaginable all the more difficult. 

There's a lot of debate about vaccination, as theoretically it makes it harder to determine the few birds in the population that may have some natural genetic resistance to the disease. My view is that NO birds in the population have any resistance. If you think of the level of inbreeding that must have been necessary for so many recessive characteristic to emerge (un-zipped fluffy feathers, black pigmentation, extra toes etc), it's equally likely that any genes for Marek's resistance were bred out at the same time. And this selective inbreeding has been going on for over a hundred years in this country, and probably a millennium before that in China. The problem with extreme selective breeding, you can never be sure what problems you may be selecting for along side desired physical characteristics.

It's possible that some of the newer colours do possess greater immunity from the crosses to other breeds necessary to bring genes for cuckoo barring or red colouring into the breed, but any protective effect of hybridisation would be lost if Marek's tolerance was specifically selected for, at the expense of colour, type and other exhibition values.