Sunday 17th January 2016

​Sunday 17th January 2016
Hello friends and family.
Tuesday was a big day and Hiltrun came up on Monday night for an early start. We had 12 more chicks that had reached 70 days old to micro-chip. Thank goodness, they were all over the 5 Kg mark which is the cut-off point for rehab at this age. The chicks here weighed an average of 5.4 Kg and the ones at Okahau Pt weighed an average of 5.3 Kg.

Chick ready to micro-chip

​After we had finished, we had Kathryn, the vet come to take swabs from our two chicks. We don’t know why they are underweight, so she took bacterial and fungal swabs so we can find out and select the best treatment for them. In the meantime, they are angelic – eating 4 salmon, twice a day and causing no problems at all.

Both parents of our hospital chicks are OK

​Tuesday brought even more gifts – rain! We got 11mm of rain over night and I expected this to result in a quiet day at the Top tip shop on Wednesday morning, but it seems that cleanouts were the order of the day and we got lots of new stuff in and not a lot of sales. 

Growing up fast!

​On Thursday I went to Oamaru and admired the harvested fields of grain along the way. In the afternoon I checked all of the bees except the Lighthouse Hills apiary and they were fine – one even stung me on the cheek so once again, I look a bit peculiar! 

Pohutukawa in bloom in the colony

Yesterday was the day for the big round up of chicks to micro-chip. Chris and Hiltrun came up on Friday night, Elaine came out to help and Nola was there to see what needed to be done.

Bees drinking from the penguin swimming pool.

​We put microchips into 27 chicks and 5 were under-weight and needed to come into hospital.
The average weight here was 5.4Kg  and at Okahau Point, 4.9Kg – all together- 5.2Kg
At Okahau Point we came across a crèche of 6 chicks plus one injured adult which required a bit of planning to get everyone sorted out with minimum stress all round. What a skilled team we have!

Pretty flowers in the garden.

This is an OK season for penguins.
Have a great week!
Rosalie