Still Nice and Growing

The mother goose and her gosling are still in the chicken pen.

She is doing a great job of caring for the little one.

It does manage to slip out of the pen because it’s so tiny.  When it gets out into the barnyard, it has a hard time finding its way back to mom.

I usually go help it out.  Hopefully, my handling the baby will help to keep it nice.

Mother Goose is even nice to me when I return her baby.

I am glad these two are here, but I am just as relieved the others are not.

Geese

When I moved to my acreage 22 1/2 years ago, the first animal I added was geese.  I got them as little babies.  I adored them, and I added a few more the next year.  At one point I had about 25.

Kizzy peacefully in the middle of the Embden, Toulouse, and African geese

I adored my geese for twenty years.

Gabby was the best mom.

The ganders could be quite nasty during breeding season, but for the most part we all got along.

protecting a nest

I did have the “three amigos” who were three ganders without mates.  They just hung out with each other.  Occasionally, they’d nip a kid’s tail, but it was just a goose goosing a kid.  They weren’t mean.

the “three amigos” at the cattle tank

After the coyotes decimated my flock I was left with just one of the last girls hatched and old ganders. After I lost the old guys, I really wanted more for her to have company.  I liked my geese.

What was left of my flock after the coyotes decimated them.

I now hate them.  The three who came to my farm are terrorists.  I had to let them out of the chicken pen because they constantly attacked me.

The three I brought to the farm as company for my last African girl.

Now they attack my goats; they chase them out of where they always napped. They chase my girls away from the milk room while I’m trying to milk.  I even saw them chase a llama out of the barnyard.  When Frodo and Rosie were tiny babies sleeping, the geese were biting them.  The kids were so little they didn’t even know to run away, and I had to rescue them.  They attacked Benji when he first got here and didn’t know he couldn’t put his head through the fence.

They are teaching the three hatched this spring to be just as bad.

The final straw was when my old, nice lady hatched new goslings.  One didn’t make it out of the egg, so I was helping it get out and put it under a heat lamp to gain strength.  While I was doing this, they (I think the two-year-old girl–I’m not positive) killed all three of the newly hatched goslings.

the gosling I helped out of the egg

I’m done with them.  I managed to get my nice older mom and herd her into the chicken pen.  I took the gosling back over to her, and they are doing well.

Mrs. Goose misses the others, and they want in with her, but the older girl tried to reach through and kill this gosling when she saw it.

The six terrorists wanting in with mama goose; the junk is to try and keep the gosling away from the fence, but I shut them in the building to be sure.

So, I listed those six for sale.  It took a couple of hours before I had a taker.  I herded them into the Love Shack (you can herd geese, but not llamas), and then I sent them on their way.

I’ll leave Mrs. Goose and her baby in the chicken pen so that the little one is more protected and likely to live.

No good pictures because she is protective and I’m not getting that close

I hope it’s a girl.

Hopefully, it gets its temperament from its mom and not those other nasty things.

New Blood

I’ve been saying for several years that I need new blood for the goat herd, that is I need to buy a new buck.  I put it off when I got the diagnosis of copper deficiency because I wanted to get that under control first. Then there was a pandemic.  After selling Tiger, I hit the point of critical need for new blood.  See every buck I have is an Osboer.  Xerxes is a Fionn baby.  I love Xerxes, but he sometimes gives me tiny kids; he sometimes gives me huge kids.  In Maisie’s case, he gave me the extremes in one birth.  I would like to quit breeding him because of this.  I would sell him, but he’s crazy wild.  I would just have to shoot him to get him off the farm, so  I guess he’s going to stay here and mostly live a contented life (but not get as many girls as he would like).

Xerxes (an old picture because he thought it was too hot for a photo shoot)

Then there’s Freddie.  He is also a Fionn baby, my last Fionn baby.  He is the one I would use for most of my breeding because he should have more consistently sized kids.  He’s more meat goat, and if you want goats to sell well, you want them to be meat goats.  The only problem with him is that he’s solid white.  People want the traditional Boer look.  He will stay for another year though because he’s also my insurance for getting my perfect kid.

Freddie

I also am keeping Frodo for now.  He is going to breed Pretzel to give me the perfect kid.  Then he’ll get sold.  Ideally, his kid will be my next Osboer buck that is my forever buck.

Frodo fighting with Missy

Since I sold Tiger, I need a new buck to breed my Osboer girls.  I have several girls from Fionn.

Venus Osboer with this year’s kids Rajah (on the left) and Abu (on the right)

I decided to go to the sale barn on Saturday to see what prices were like because it’s been a long time since I watched a sale.  It was horribly hot (101°F feels like temperature).  I mean it was hot enough to melt a llama (just ask Maybeline if you don’t believe me).

Maybeline

That is really not the time to bring home an animal because it’s already a horribly stressful thing for them. But, I couldn’t pass up this deal.

Freshly arrived at Eden Hills

He weighed 90 pounds.  I’m guessing he’s about the same age as Freddie (a yearling).  He was clean and moved well and was really calm.   Even when I reached in the pen when we got home, he just looked at me. He was clam all the way until I got in the cage to put a collar and lead on him.

And I dropped the leash and had to catch him again to take it off.

Of course, he was facing a barking dog,

Sky

squawking geese,

nasty gander

sniffing llamas,

Odie

the scent of two other bucks,

Freddie and Xerxes (old picture because it was really hot)

and a completely new place in oppressive heat.  I suppose that would terrify anyone.  I finally got him to the greenhouse, and he’s starting to calm back down.

He won’t take a peanut yet, but we’ll keep working on that.

I even put a tarp up for him to stand outside and get a bit of shade in the afternoon and still be able to catch whatever breeze there might be.

I think he looks pretty sweet.

Benji

Meet Benjamin Butterboer (aka Benji).