Despite ongoing miserable weather, the grey partridges are doing very well indeed. Touch wood, all are still alive and kicking, and their breasts seem greyer every single day. Some are even starting to grow the classic horseshoe markings, and their calls are getting more substantial than the conversational clucking which was all they were up Continue reading

My attempts to work with grey partridges took a welcome but unexpected turn yesterday when I came into possession of seventeen eight week old poults. Thanks to a reader of this blog, I drove down to Penrith to collect a box of birds which have been totally captivating me ever since I got them home. Continue reading

Continuing with the series of partridge pictures, here’s a photo I just took of the single grey partridge at almost precisely four weeks old. He’s come on in leaps and bounds, but I’m very conscious of the fact that he’s been on poultry feed, which doesn’t have nearly a high enough protein content for him. Continue reading

At three weeks old, my single grey partridge is really coming on. In fact, he’s done so well that he’s been attacking the quail which share his brooder. On of the quail was so badly beaten up that I really wondered if it was going to live, and the only thing I could do was Continue reading

After two weeks, I now have only one grey partridge chick. The bacterial infection killed the second chick on Tuesday, so now I’m stuck with a single chick from the first batch. It’s being brooded with some quail, so it’s not on it’s own but it’s still pretty disappointing. The progress from last week is Continue reading

Just wanted to post this picture of the same partridge chick I photographed a week ago, when it was a day-old. I’d like to photograph the same chick every week until it gets its adult plumage, mainly because I don’t know much about grey partridges and it would be interesting to document it. He started Continue reading

Despite having been lent a cracking “covina” fully automatic incubator, it looks like I’m set for another partridge disaster. I was sent two dozen eggs through the post on Tuesday and it was obvious that  they had been very badly packaged. If you held the polystyrene packaging upside down, you could hear the eggs plopping Continue reading

After my disastrous hatch of grey partridge at the weekend, I was fairly irritated by the fact the most promising survivor developed a dramatic case of splay-leg and quite rapidly became totally unable to move around the brooder. As I thinned out the stragglers and realised that I was only going to be left with Continue reading

Having expected the partridges to hatch on Friday night, I was getting worried by Sunday morning. The shells had started to chip on Thursday, but no further activity whatsoever was cause for concern. When one partridge hatched at lunchtime, I was sure all the others would be close behind, but there was no sign of Continue reading

Now that the eggs are in the incubator and the first bantam is starting to show some evidence of turning broody, my partridge project seems to be coming together nicely. I don’t know a great deal about grey partridges, so this area of my work on the Chayne is something of a new voyage of Continue reading