Fair is fowl, fowl is fair.

[fowltemptress]

I knew posting my bird count would lead to more ducklings. Shirley finally hatched a few of her own.

I'm curious to see if she can hang on to them. Annie's clutch all went bad; I don't know what is up with that girl, because she can't seem to sit on eggs without them rotting. But as soon as she heard the cheeps of everyone else's ducklings she switched to mama mode, and as of today Annie has successfully stolen the ducklings of all her fellow muscovy hens.

Where she goes, ducklings follow, giving no thought at all to the hens who spent so much time and effort hatching them out. Children, amirite?

though there is something to be said for freedom. Genghis here doesn't seem overly concerned that her hatchlings have chosen a different hen, but she is  very concerned that I approached her without treats. She can forgive an ungrateful offspring, but a human without grubs? Unforgivable!

The ducklings grow fast! They're already at the age that I can tell the males from the females, and it looks like this year heavily favored males! I'm always thrilled when that happens.

Two males hanging out . . .

. . . and a dainty female enjoying a stretched out foot. It's the poultry equivalent of throwing the sheets off your legs.

I was going to try to take a picture a day of one of them starting with hatch day, but I forgot. A project for next year?



A guinea is sitting on eggs in the goose coop, and a different one from last year. My favorite guineas are the white ones, so I'm relieved whenever I see a white hen that's decided to brood in safety.

Klaus and Remus are always going at it through the fence. It cracks me up to watch even as I thank goodness for the fence. Without that barrier, the fighting between them is a scary thing. I've no idea why these two decided to be mortal enemies.

 

[fowltemptress]

My father has started sending out a Christmas card every year with a collage of pictures of my siblings and their spouses. Everyone is spruced up with nice clothes, great hair, and makeup done perfectly. He didn't manage to get a picture of my husband and me last year, so he made it his mission to get one this year - a mission he promptly forgot until the very last minute, when he was about to leave our house for the long drive home. It was morning, I was in the middle of things in the garden, and my husband, who enjoys sleeping in on weekends after a hard work week, had just walked out to groggily bid my father drive "wrecklessly."

So try to picture receiving one of those Christmas card collages. The pictures all have great lighting, with the couples in the photos wearing dresses or suits and basically giving off an overall vibe of not being the sort to forget about having their picture taken. Then something out of place catches your eye . . .

(But first! Ignore our faces. We normally don't go so heavy on the yellow spray tan.)

I'm also wearing a big floppy hat under that ginormous face of mine. Didn't even think to take it off.

I know I should probably dig up and send my father a photo that's less, er, candid, but now that I've seen this picture I know I'll regret it if I deny my family and my father's friends the opportunity to witness me in all my fashionista glory. Those BYC shirts are so hot right now!

That's my garden behind us. I am decidedly not a gardener, but somehow we wind up with vegetables on our dinner table year after year so I must be doing something right. The fence around it is an absolute patchwork abomination; it's a culmination of all my attempts to keep my own dang chickens out. Deer? No problem. Rabbits? Barely make a dent. Chickens? We will raze your greenery and salt the earth!
And for some reason all my chickens are stymied by the little four foot fence that separates their area from the geese and ducks, but as soon as the same fence encloses a vegetable garden they turn into fence scaling geniuses with wings every bit as flight-capable as those of a hawk. I extended the height of the fence by pounding pvc pipe onto the t-posts and connecting more fencing (sloppily) to those, which has managed to keep all but one very enterprising chicken out.

Sometimes I look at all the adorable coops and pretty fencing people post on here and think maybe I should make more of an effort to "pretty things up." But now I look at this future Christmas card highlight that my father took, and I think to myself, "Baby steps might be asking too much here. Let's go with zygote steps."

None of this keeping up with the Joneses matters, though, when you have geese to snuggle.

Oh, and I've been harvesting cucumbers lately and took a picture of one that drew my attention. Just leaving it here next to a picture of a sheep for no reason in particular. No need to look for similarities or anything ridiculous like that.

 

[Gill-b]

My sides hurt from laughing.

I love your Christmas card picture. Embrace it in all its rural outdoor this-is-me glory.

 

[fowltemptress]

This requires no words, I think.

 

[fowltemptress]

This picture was taken just now. Both my embden girls are reliable brooders.

One of the goslings that hatched yesterday in the other nest visits its future playmates.

Here's an observation I've made over the last several years: once eggs start pipping, my mama ducks and geese stand up and won't sit back down again until after everyone has hatched. Often my ducks will stand to the side instead of directly over the nest. Before the pip, when things start cheeping, the moms will be standing up and sitting down again every few seconds. I've seen folks on this forum stress horribly over having to open an incubator for a split second to check on things during hatch - I feel like watching my birds would ease their minds quite a bit.

 

[Gill-b]

Wonderful photograph! I love it.

 

[fowltemptress]

July bird count:
23 Geese
32 Ducks
47 Guineas
31 Chickens
9 Not Chickens

The numbers are jumping around quite a bit, as you can see.
Every year I think to myself, "I'm ready for this," and I always believe myself. Apparently I am an incredibly gifted liar.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get any chores done when  this is there to greet you every morning? I'm not even one of those folks who's enamored with all things baby - I find geese to be infinitely cuter than goslings - but watching the group dynamics play out when suddenly goslings are thrown into the fray is irresistibly interesting. Suddenly Tex goes from, "Must throttle Picard now," to "Must hover over goslings like the most cumbersome hummingbird in existence over the floofiest flowers to ever floof." It's no joke; you don't know the meaning of the word floof until you've held a gosling in your hands. I always wonder what's holding all the floof together, because you sure can't convince me there's a bird in there somewhere.

I love seeing how the phalanx comes together when a bird of prey passes overhead. One of these days I hope to get a picture of it, because suddenly there's nine geese encircling the goggles, staring at the sky and screaming a warning in the most dreadful cacophony you're likely to hear outside of a super bowl half time show. I sometimes wonder why I spent so many years wearing hearing protection at concerts and shooting ranges only to have it all come undone with a few discordant goosey meetings. My great aunt went deaf when her cart overturned because the horse was spooked by a newfangled contraption called a car. I look forward to being the new great aunt who's spoken of at family gatherings:

"See this picture? That's ol' fowltemptress. Deaf as a doorknob after a gander giggled in her ear."

"A gander?"

"Ayup. Back in her day they raised great beasts called geese for meat, and the ganders were the greatest and beastliest of the geese. They had teeth like giant hounds and made a sound that could wake the dead, or else send you to your grave depending on which side of the fence yer sittin' on at the time. Luckily she tucked her fingers in her ears last second, elsen your great aunt wouldn't have lived to see another day. Yep, it's a good thing we've grown civilized and don't need to risk life and limb for a bit of protein these days. Pass the soylent green, kiddo."

Things I've changed this year from previous years of raising goslings:
A: A lot less checking on eggs. I think I checked on them once when I saw flies and realized an egg must have gone rotten. I candled everything, threw out the rotten culprit and a couple of quitters I found in the mix, and allowed myself to trust that eventually goslings would appear. It's very hard for me not to candle developing eggs at least once a week, so this was painful for me.

B: I allowed everyone to mingle with the new arrivals immediately. Normally I set up barriers out of fear of trampling, but after a couple of years of observing all the geese around goslings I just don't think it's that big a risk - at least not with my lot. Everyone quits fighting and gets super gentle when goslings are present, and if anything, the moms have more of a tendency to step on their goggles than any of the rest of the gaggle. I feel like the ganders know this, and that's why they take charge and hover so assiduously.

C: Giving the newcomers access to everything immediately. I had been keeping the moms and goslings confined for a week before allowing them to roam all over Gosland and the pastures, but after a couple of years of watching nine geese transform themselves into an unbreakable Roman legion dead set on protecting their young, I feel pretty comfortable allowing the gaggle to assess their own risks. I have, of course, made sure every water source has an easy exit point for tiny poultry, but other than that they're off without rails. I'm both astounded and amused by the treks the adults have already taken these little guys on. And all of it done at a gosling's pace! I go nuts if I'm stuck behind anyone who walks even a nanosecond slower than me, so I am in awe of the patience displayed here.

Things I'll change for next season:
Only one thing, really, but I've got to rig up a separate area for Winger, Casanova Canard.

Normally this goober ignores my geese, but as soon as they start sitting on eggs it's like he sees easy pickin's, and my sitting geese become sitting ducks. It's way too disruptive, and my ganders can't be guarding the girls every second. I don't want to limit my muscovy hens' access to everything, so I'll have to figure something out.