Things I Learn While the Kids Are Away...

Right now, our elder child is away as a camp counselor for two months. She made it back here for 36 hours over the weekend, but really, she is gone for two months. Our younger child is responsible for most of the chickens, and one small group of the goats, but I am essentially taking over lots of responsibilities I used to share...

This had led to me learn a few things while she has been away...

1. My two goats really do poop more than all of the others put together. That wasn't an exaggeration. Lulu seems proud of that, but she is jealous of sharing me with the other goats while their caretaker is away,

2. The camouflage shade cloth makes the kidding pens look like a MASH unit. The goats all hoped it was real leaves, and had to try it. Then they tried it over and over again until I tied it WAY up to keep it out of their reach!

3. The boys really do knock their little house over as many times per day as you are willing to put it back up. She wasn't blowing me off when I asked her to pick it up.  Now, I believe they think it is funny since I fuss over them having the extra shade. Then when I go in to fix their messes, they dance and act neglected since their usual caretaker is away.

4. My geese really are as destructive as I thought. They are working extra hard to plow through the container garden. They trimmed the citrus trees, including some new trees that really didn't need it, ate three pots worth of mint- three times each- and the basil twice, not to mention a few other things!

5. Bailey's black Cochin hen has issues. At least she is finally letting the new little hens sleep on the same side of the house. But that little chickie has issues!  Very antisocial, that one.  New little ones are fine, not sure what to make of her, but fine.

6. Shadow gets lazy in the summer. She will sleep in from of the fan with the boys all day if allowed, then roll in the mud but still expect to come back in. Okay, that part really isn't new, but she used to get up and head outside with me at first light! At least she still takes guard duty seriously, I suppose.

What have you learned when you were required to go without your partner in crime?

Sexing Goslings and Other Fun Times at Our House

Chock it up to yet another thing on the list of things I never knew I would learn in this life. Last night, the boys caught the young goslings and I worked on determining boys and girls. Yup, sexing geese. I never thought I would be able to add that to the list! Seriously, who puts that on their career goals, anyway?

The geese around here are interesting. Not overly friendly, but not mean. They keep the hawks and owls from attacking. From times of losing chickens even through the roofs of pens, we have not had one loss like this since the geese came to live with us 2 years ago. They are pranksters, trading pranks with the puppy and the goats, and busybodies, always with their nose in someone's business. But they do their job.

Each year in the Spring, Mother Goose nestles in to hatch babies. I set her up with her own food and water, over behind the swingset near the old greenhouse. Twice a day Uncle Wiggly gets her up and they fly around to the goose area to eat and drink before he walks her back. He looks out for her, and is an attentive father as babies hatch as well as with rearing them.

We keep several small water containers with their food so they have easy access to water without letting the little ones get in over their head in the good area.

The baby geese have the sweetest little voices! I hope you have the volume turned up! While they are beginning to get the orange in their bills and legs, the voices are all baby!

They are rather used to free run of the property! They meet me at the feed shed in the morning and ask to be fed before the other animals on my list.

Shadow Paws, who normally pranks the adult geese in exchange for them pranking her, maintains a safe distance to keep the geese parents happy while they are raising the little ones. 

However, we DO NOT need EIGHT GEESE. Goodness! We have a few folks that requested to be called first for little ones once they were sexed, and I will do that today, and give them until the end of the week before I open it up to others. But in calling, the first question is often, are they males or females?

So after dinner last night, the boys caught the little ones, one at a time, and I working on determining sex.  This little female really relaxed int he process.

He stood her back up, and she registered her complaint!

This one had even more to say!

I love the attitude form this one. By the way, curious about the plant pot on what used to be my clothesline? There is a fake owl there that the puppy thought looked VERY destructive. We had hoped the pot would save the clothesline from the puppy, but it blew off, and now Wyatt put it back on.

This one took its attitude straight to Charlie!

I am not going to claim to be anything approaching an expert at sexing chicks or goslings! But so that you know, here is what we did...

Vent sexing. And I have to admit, I had to ask for help with the camera since my hands were occupied, and clearly that didn't work out very well. I will add more photos later for better reference. This one is a female. If you could see more closely, the vent relaxes and begins to separate, leading to a little open there, showing you either (n this case) the folds just inside the vent and nothing else,

or in this case, a little corkscrew of a penis protruding out.  One of them didn't relax well for me, and while I think it is a girl, I will double check all of the girls to make sure one boy didn't sneak through. Our best educated guess right now, though, is One young gander, four young geese. At most, I believe I could be wrong on one of the girls.

I bet you always wondered about that, right?  Well, I will call folks this afternoon and give them the option of picking up geese, and I will admit we will likely be keeping a little female.  (We will work on naming her once all the dust is settled!) 

We will catch you up o more later. So, what things have you learned to do that you never though you would need to?

Spring Follows the Ups and Downs of Our Little World...

Last year, we incubated and hatched lots of eggs, and kept or sold a fir number of chicks.  Somewhere in it all, we ended up with one single (hopefully) pullet in this age range. Not one of our better planning moments, but I had mandated that we turn off the incubator during the holidays, so there weren't any younger ones coming along to keep it company.

The little one, on the left in the photo below, was living in the house, mostly in the tough brooder.  As the only one, her interaction was with us, as well as with Shadow. As she had grown, she would get out of the brooder, go for a walk around the house, hang out with Shadow while watching Wyatt practice piano, and chat with me while I put on my shoes in the morning.

She has not been a tidy roommate, as you can imagine, but I just couldn't seem to come up with anyone for her to hang out with. Then, I found some black sexlinks, fully feathered, and near to her size at a nearby feed store. While I am normally not big on hatchery chicks, I needed someone to teach the little pullet that she was, in fact, a chicken, and help her transition to her pen. So Saturday afternoon, on my way home from work, I brought her friends and Wyatt got them all set up in the first step of the grow out pen. So far, so good...

While I was at it, Friday night, Wyatt helped me dig a hole for the lower section of this pond insert that Grandma didn't want anymore. He even helped me situate the bricks for steps.

The geese are truly loving their new pool!

The geese are also laying. Wyatt is concerned about the fact that some of the hatching didn't go so well last year, and because the first egg that Mother Goose laid was pecked by Miss Friendly. The clutch was at three eggs at last count, though it got dark quickly this evening when we got home and we didn't get to check. What would you do? Incubate or let them try to raise the little ones?

You saw the project Wyatt helped me with, but on Monday, as the boys headed off to pick up the feed store and Bailey and I were heading home from town after the gym, we knew this was to be our big project!

We started by pulling EVERYTHING out of the tack shed.

The only thing that remained was the shelf unit, which was pulled well forward and wiped down. The walls and floors were cleaned, and we organized and cleaned as things went back in.

It was dark when we finished, but so worth it to get things cleaned and ready for Spring, and especially to do it before the feed order went in.

And this was the end result! What do you think?

Well, with Sunday night closing out, and a new week beginning, more big projects await and more always being added to the list, it is time for rest and recharge before the coming week.

What is on your list for this week?

What Have We Been Up To?

And the farm animals take over the blog! Clearly, the humans have been too busy to blog lately, with their homeschooling and church and cleaning pens and stuff, so we thought we animals would share a few words on what we have been up to around here!

We finally got some rain around here, and the "goosies on the loosies" as that house mama calls us like rain better than any of the other animals! Why? To play in, of course! But also, because weeds mean that we eat fresh greens that the other animals don't reach. Mama says that means we are brats telling everyone else about it, but we are the guard geese after all, so we should get some perks!

House mama, also known as the feed lady, she tried to pull some weeds down by her garden recently. We told her this was unacceptable, as they were the salad bar we hadn't gotten to yet. Finally, we got her to leave the piles for a couple days so that we could munch a bit before she did more work.

She still has more to prep for our eating. We are done with the other piles, so she had best get busy!

Just because the geese roam all the time doesn't mean they are the only ones with good treats! Despite getting our own salad bar in our pen that Wyatt keeps stocked and growing for us, we still get baskets of sprouts!

It is like a party when the red baskets come out in the middle of the day!

We even share with the guineas! (Well, most of the time, anyway!)

Breakfast time is the best time in our pen! Okay, well, we think we get the best dinner, too! We have the house mama and our Bailey trained to bring us bottles twice a day, and then Daddy Powerstroke lets us have the feeder . This is our look that says, "We are cute!" We know you agree, and the Brahmas that share a fence with us in the grow out pen sing along with us.

The house mama is always excited to see melons doing well. What we like about melons, is that the chickens get lots of melon and then they are in better moods!  They complain less about us singing at night when they are in good moods, and I think I heard this kind of melon called a honeydew...

Just in case you were missing out on some of my cuteness, I am Freedom's Prayer!  I am pretty sure the world is here to cuddle me!

Did we mention we are masters as coexistence? The goats might say we complain about them singing, but we keep our rooster in line, and also have a pet snake in our pen. If you look closely, you will see his tail over by the old feeder we like to stand on.

This guy doesn't bother us hens, and our nesting boxes and new feeder are up off the ground. The desert comes with mice, so we let this guy wander around so the mice don't bother our nests, and in turn we nest up high and only try to sit on eggs up in the loft where Wyatt keeps our straw. The added bonus- the bigger our Wyatt gets, the funnier it is when he tries to get eggs from us up there! Then we all stand around in the door to our hen house and watch him... Did I mention bonus points for anyone who can get him stuck up there so he has to call for help?

Why yes, the chickens tried to take over! But guess what! We are just too cute to ignore!

My brother was being silly and trying to wrestle with our Dad, so I decided to play peekaboo from my favorite house. Dad also likes to pose. Don'e tell the house mama, but he leaves a pile of poop near where he poses on purpose. She says he wasn't well socialized before our Bailey brought him home, but Bailey says that means he will do just fine in our family of homeschool goofballs. Not sure what that means, but she always scratches our ears and brings us food. And, if we cry really loud, she will come out over and over to check on us!

Well, that is the world according to the bucks, the geese and the Big Pen. We dare the does and the others to outdo us!

Romance Over the Nest

The Dating Life of geese...

Two or three times each day, the gander walks from his favorite areas of the property, over where he talks tot he bucks and hte show birds, stops by the Buckeye pen and the Brahma pen, gives them his superiority act, then starts talking. His honks and honks and waddles past the Big pen and the wood pile, around the trees with the birdhouses, and into the backyard. He calls the whole way, then stands, flapping his wings and honking, by the slide. Mother Goose gets up from her nest then, and walks to him.

Then they chatter together, and he walks her back around the way he came.  When they get around by the Big pen, they flap their wings and fly low across the yard, he in front, her following close behind, over to their house and feed area.

They chatter, he makes sure she eats,they play in the water together, and then they walk back together, chattering and waddling back to her nest. She doesn't allow him all the way to the nest, as though it is a hiding spot. Once she sits down and gets her eggs all adjusted, he waddles off to sentry duty to make sure nothing messes with them, or goes off to do his thing around the property.

But for that little time, ten minutes or so, a few times each day, they focus on each each other and their time together. So cute!

Baby Gosling Watch

Mother Goose was off to go eat a couple days ago, when I peeked in and saw that she is up to ten eggs! Wow!!! She has been pulling out her downy feathers and making her nest nice and soft, but we have red flag wind warnings this week, so the nest has been work for her to maintain.

She doesn't like me near, nor does the gander, but she does seem to be doing okay. I would have loved to have her in her regular house, but this is where she selected so I am worried that moving her would be quite disruptive.

Gander likes to tell the other animals what to do, and protect mother Goose fiercely.

Still, he continues with his quality control behavior, here inspecting the job Wyatt and I did with our pens cleaning on Monday and putting fresh DE down.

Mother Goose has been fluffing and fussing and preening her nest, so I sure hope she gets some babies from the hatch. Do any of you have any experience with free range geese nesting in odd spots? Because we don't want her long term home to be so close to the swing set and the greenhouse, I am concerned about moving her other partial fence over there.

I will have to do something, though, since we will be dividing farm duties in rotation during county fair and we won't have as much time to help her around the time they hatch. I suppose I will do some more research today, though if you all have tried it, I would love to hear your experiences!