Clucking Hell

Rejoice chickens! From midnight tonight all throughout the EU you shall be free as the European Union has banned battery hen cages.  Well. Kinda.

Now I am all for an end to all intensive farming and battery hen egg production in particular. I keep chickens and they are all ex-battery hens that I get from the folks at the British Hen Welfare Trust. When you get your hens they look bloody awful, weak legs, most of their feathers missing and looking like the inhabitants of some avian Bergen-Belsen. The good news is that with a bit of feeding, running around and time they get back most of their feathers and soon start pecking, scratching, having dust baths and generally doing that chickeny thing. Oh and the eggs taste better than anything you'll get in the supermarkets too so they well pay you back for your £5 a bird donation.

Soeven though I'll probably have to source my chucks from elsewhere in the future I'll be a happy dragon if I know there aren't going to be any more fucked up featherless chickens, so (grits teeth) well done EU.

Ah, no, actually strike that... not so well done after all:

[Jane Howarth, from the British Hen Welfare Trust] said: "The British egg industry has really stepped up to the mark and they are ready. But at the moment we're looking at a situation where there could be 80 million hens still in illegal cages in Europe."

...

Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said: "It is unacceptable that after the ban on battery cages comes into effect, millions of hens across Europe will still remain in poor conditions.
"We have all had plenty of time to make these changes, but 13 EU nations have not done so. The UK egg industry alone has spent £400million ensuring hens live in better conditions.

So as ever the UK has rolled over to the mighty EU and done everything our master in Brussels have told us to do but 13 countries out of 27, nearly half the EU,  have just gone "fuck you" and carried on just as they bloody well please.

And do you know what the EU will do about that? Sweet fuck all, that's what.

And do you know what the EU will do if we have the temerity to ban egg imports from those 13 countries? Fine the shit out of us for daring to break trading rules no doubt.

As millions will be saying at new years eve parties throughout the land tonight "Do you think we can just leave yet?"

"Cluck, motherfucker"

Gardening with rifles.

Hello dear readers... oh hand on I just had a look at my webstats, let's make that "Hello dear reader and the rest of you who land here after typing "scaly dragon porn" into Google with your left hand because your right hand is otherwise engaged."

Bit of a blogging hiatus over the last couple of weeks as I was on holiday after the HK debacle and before that was too busy telling anyone at work what a complete and utter clusterfuck the HK operation was to get any blogging done. Anyway back now and with concrete poured, greenhouse erected, raised beds made and a whole load of other "grow it yourself" stuff done.

However I'm not entirely sure I'm going about this latest "save the planet grow your own food it tastes better and is good for you" thing that seems to be going on at the moment. Sure all those things might be true but it's so far cost me a small fucking fortune to even get going. Tomatoes, peppers and chillies all need to be grown more or less indoors so that's 180 quid for the sand, cement and gravel, 200 quid for a cement mixer (I have lots of concrete to make later on so I splurged on a new one) then 800 quid for a wood greenhouse because the aluminium ones are crap so all in with pots, compost and the all important little sticks that say what each plant is I've spent the best part of 1300 quid on this so far which would buy a hell of a lot of chillies I reckon.

Yes I know I could have done things cheaper. We did make a start with a cheapie plastic "greenhouse" which was basically thick plastic over a flimsy frame which is getting results but it (a) is dropping to bits already with one part of the "door" held together with bulldog clips after the zip broke and (b) looks dreadful.

The beds were a bit cheaper - just 80 quid for some timber and a bit of my time to screw it all together and 20 quids worth of timber treatment. We're only going to use these for stuff like lettuice and expensive veg like white onions though as living in the middle of a swamp where the predominant industry is growing things I can pick up a 25kg sack of maris pipers for under a tenner and that lasts us most of the winter so sod growing my own spuds.

Oh and the chickens... wow we get free eggs and they are much better than the shop bought ones. And the chickens themselves were cheap as we got ex battery hens so it was just a fiver each as a donation to some hen-hugging charity and they are cheap to feed. Ah but they need a house to live in - I got a plastic one as when I costed the timber to make a traditional henhouse the plastic one came in about the same price. And then living in the middle of a swamp as you do as soon as you get chickens you end up with rats.

So now I have a shiny new air rifle to deal with the rat issue. Got a reasonably priced 200 quid one from China (so now Blackpowder is not talking to me because I got a girly gun rather than a proper one) and there is something quite theraputic about sitting on your deck in the evening blasting away at the furry little bastards and at 15 metres even a crap shot like me can hardly miss and they just go "squeek" and fall over (apart from the one I had to finish off with a brick as I fluffed the headshot) but yet another expense I could have done without.

So there you are, self sufficiency and growing your own food. I would not recommend it unless you already have a very well paid job. But you do get to kill rats with a gun.