As with most of these stories it starts with a trip to the feed store with my wife and sons, there were ducklings there and of course, everyone wanted to take a fuzzball home. I asked my wife how she felt about it and she said she liked the idea but didn’t know the details, I pointed to the back of the duckling and said it's right there that’s De-Tail, the part the wags, I laughed, she didn’t, but I agreed to do some research. I read somewhere that Geese were good protectors against predators so I decided to start with 2 geese and then we would ease into ducks for eggs in the future. I ordered 2 geese 1 Embden and 1 Toulouse from Meltzer farms and picked the birds up from the airport the evening of their hatching day so they would not have to spend their first night in the post office. Sadly the Toulouse which I had named “Pimples” did not make it through the night, I notified Meltzer and they indicated they would send 2 replacements which would take 1 week. The Embden named “Lucy” was in a near constant state of panic without a friend and it was stressing me out the extent that I went to the feed store and purchased a comparably sized chick, a hen which I named “Essy” (as in HenEssy), that turned out to be a solid plan both birds were calm and happy. The following week the 2 new Toulouse gosling arrived, and were named “DukDuk” and “Grey” because I loved that game, and if you are going to have “HenEssy” you should also have “Grey Goose”. I did a little more research I learned that in blending a flock it was important that the birds be the same age so on week number 3, 3 ducklings arrived, which of course was too late because by the 3rd-week geese are huge and not very nice to ducklings. It didn’t seem fair that the geese had a pet chicken, and the ducks did not, so I went back to the feed store and picked up a 2nd hen. So at this point, three weeks into my plan of starting off with 2 geese, I had 3 geese, 3 ducks and 2 chickens. One duck did not make it, the hen “Essy” started to crow and has been renamed “Gooster” and the 2nd seems to have some sort of growth disorder and has remained very small and has thus been earned the moniker “Chicken Little”. So far the experience has been quite fun, I have made 2 self-cleaning ponds in the yard and am working on a self-cleaning coop, the birds free range all day and co-exist quite well with the dogs, cat and children, and are significantly better yard ornaments that our traditional Florida plastic flamingos.
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