Monday, June 17, 2013

All on their own

Last year we assisted our geese in hatching out a clutch.  Hank built them a nice little hutch.  We kept the sheep away from the geese so as to give them some privacy.  We let the two girls lay 22 eggs and then candled them to see which ones took.  Finally, we were satisfied that all was properly in place, and Mother Goose sat her required 30 days on 11 eggs.  Four goslings hatched, and we were quite proud of ourselves.

This year we did nothing.



One of the yearlings got broody last month, and so we decided to just let Nature take its course.  We weren't really keen on adding to the flock, but being her first nest, how many would she actually hatch?  Lo and behold, a few days ago we had two little goslings wander out of the hutch.






Here's a family photo of our small (but loud) flock.  Grimm, the gander, is in the foreground.  The two older females are the white ones on the right side of the photo.  The darker goose in the back left is one of the yearlings that hatched last year.  She is the proud mama of the two little goslings.  Rearing these little ones seems to be a family affair.  Grimm is uber-protective, yet very gentle.  If anyone approaches the fence, all honking breaks loose.  The goslings head for Mama and the other three, heads down, come charging.





These little guys are precious, as are all Spring babies on the farm.  I may be buying a kiddie pool soon.

7 comments:

  1. Very cute. Putting in a kiddi pool might be a little dangerous with so many protected moms. LOL

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  2. We had geese when I was a kid on our small hobby/subsistence farm. But after a year or two we discovered nobody liked the taste of goose, the noise was obnoxious, and they were too aggressive with visitors. Yes, goslings are very cute! But there is a reason the people that gave us the original geese got rid of them...... and in turn, we passed them on too. :)

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    1. I would have to agree. We roasted goose for Thanksgiving...not quite the same. We run our geese in the ewe's pasture so they're pretty well contained, but still loud and how many does one farm actually need?!

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  3. We have one little gosling running around. Two hatched out by only one made it. It was a really cold spring here [we had snow flurries on May 12] and the hatching rates we not very good.

    We have eight geese and all of them think that baby is theirs. You can't get within 15 feet of the baby before they act like they are going to eat you alive.

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  4. They are so cute!

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