The Geese Have Landed

Sunday was an interesting day for us on the farm. It was a rare morning off for me, so after a leisurely breakfast and several cups of coffee, Barry and I set out for Ellenwood to meet Ray and Ann Hill and their geese. They have African Grey geese and a few White Embdens which they raise to keep as pets. We bought five geese from them (we had originally planned to get a pair), 2 Africans and 3 Embdens. We were totally charmed by the birds and since we have been wanting geese for a while it seemed a great opportunity. The price of goslings from a hatchery with shipping included quite expensive, plus you have to have a minimum order size, and go to the post office to get them, and then you have to raise them up. We paid a little bit extra to Ray and Ann for year-old birds and one of the Embden females is already laying eggs. That’s what I call ‘buying local’!

Since this puts us a year ahead of our plan, we are going to put all the eggs from our geese into the incubator to see if we can increase our flock. We’ll keep these first five geese as our starting flock, and may have extra by the end of the year.

The first goose egg was laid only the second night they arrived at the farm. About 1:00 am I heard a lot of honking out in the barn, so I took my trusty flashlight out to see what was happening. Everyone was fine, but when I went into the goose pen I noticed a big white thing on the ground next to their water bowl. I picked it up, and it was an egg of immense size! It was so big it fit in my hand and covered it from palm to fingertip. I’d say it is more than triple the size of a chicken egg. Geese don’t lay as often as chickens, but I hope we can get 10-12 goslings to hatch.

We tallied up where we stand poultry-wise on the farm: 117 chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese, including the new wee babies just hatched from the laying hens. That’s a lotta birds! At least 50 of the broiler hens and ducks will be going away in a month or so, but then I’ll be getting more laying hens next summer to keep up the egg production. Our eggs are amazingly delicious and in high demand by the discerning palates. ;0)

That’s about it for now. I’ll try to post more pictures of the geese, especially as they follow Barry around the field on his chores. See you on the farm!

And another thing...

Note to self (and others): working a full-time job in the theatre plus trying to run an all-natural farm means the blog probably gets lost in the shuffle more often than one wants. The thing about theatre is that it is organized just like any specific timed project, but with a non-negotiable drop dead date (the show MUST go on, no matter what). I think that in my 20+ years in the industry I've only been involved with one show that pushed back the opening by one week. I was an actor on that one, I just want to make that clear(not my fault, in other words, lol!). You just don't delay openings, but you can delay planting the turnips or butchering the chickens. The chickens certainly don't mind and the turnips don't have an opinion, despite what the vegetable rights activists say.

Hey, I thought this blog was about natural farming and living, so what gives with the other stuff? Well, just my way of saying "sorry I haven't posted in awhile, and you can bet it will happen again in the future". Okay, 'nuff said on that. The next post will actually be about animals!

Next up: Flying turkeys, waddling chickens, cowering tortoises and who knows what nonsense!

Oh, and here is Barry's Jack-O-Lantern for this year. I think his name is Purly.

One Less Possum

This morning about 4:00 am one of the dogs roused me from sleep. They do this sometimes, usually Lysander will have to go out to relieve himself at unholy hours of the morning. I don't know why since he's beyond four years old and a big dog, so he should sleep through the night, but Barry says he's spoiled rotten, so that's why he likes to roam the back yard at night. Here is a photo of him in my working hat. Isn't he cute?





Anyway, I digress. This morning the dogs got me up and I staggered sleepily to the back door and opened it. Usually they mosey out to do their business, but this time they shot out the door like the hounds of hell were behind them. Then I heard what they had: our rooster, Big Boy, cackling loudly. He wasn't crowing, he was yelling, putting up an alarm. I didn't hesitate, I grabbed the maglite flashlight and took off running, down the crazy granite steps, through the dog yard full of tree roots to trip me up, across the field trying to avoid the chicken tractor and the field of corn (did I mention I was in my pajamas and didn't have on my glasses?). I ran up to the chicken pen, and all the chickens were out there. The chickens are out? Chickens should be asleep! The rooster was still raising the alarm when I heard the most gawd-awful sound--like someone was sitting on a duck and jumping up and down to make it wheeze. Terrible! I ran around the corner to the barn and into the chicken room. The sound was coming from under the egg nests. I shined the light there and my brain made sense of what I saw before I could put words to it: POSSUM! A damn possum was trying to eat one of my chickens! Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot!!! (I used other words, but I think you can imagine them) I yelled "Get away from her you bastard!", and this was loud enough to get Barry's attention in the house, he tells me.

The possum moved reluctantly away from the chicken, and I looked around for something I could use to bludgeon the thing. Leaning against the wall were several metal fence posts. They weren't there yesterday, but boy am I glad they were there today. I grabbed one and with the flashlight in one hand and my fence post in the other I stared down the beast. It cocked its evil little eye at me, then back at the chicken. It wanted to try for her again. The chicken was moaning in fear and agony and I kept telling her, "It's okay sweetie, you'll be fine, just let me kill this [insert really bad word here] and I'll help you". The possum started to move and I let out a war cry and plunged my trusty sword down and into it and almost through the barn wall. It jumped and contorted and squeaked, but it couldn't get away because I had it pinned. I reached over to the roosting area and picked up the chicken with one hand (still holding the Evil Thing with the post in the other) and placed her behind me on another chicken shelf. She would not stop screaming, and a chicken screaming is an ugly sound, let me tell you.

At this point I was torn. If I let up on the beast he might still be able to run away, but I couldn't just hold him there forever, and if I put down the light I couldn't see to stab him again. Luckily at this point in the narrative the brave hero came through the door: Barry stepped into the barn saying "What the bloody hell is going on?" I was completely rushed on adrenaline at this point and could hardly speak, but he saw what was happening, said a few bad words and then picked up his own fence post. "Shall I kill it?", says he, "YES!!!", says I. And he did, vigorously, several times. Would you believe that possum was twitching for ten minutes? I made Barry haul it out of the barn and onto the fields with the Medea-like curse, "Let the hawks have him!". The Really Dead Possum the next day--he is a big specimen.

We examined our victim chicken and she was covered in blood, but seemed fine when looked at more closely, just missing a lot of feathers. We think one of her legs is broken, probably in trying to get away from the possum. She eventually calmed down and we took her back to the house with us and kept her in a small dog crate. She was fine for the night. She is now isolated in a crate in the same area with the other chickens, but since she is 'damaged' they would attack and hurt her, but we are hoping she can recover eventually. If not, then we will do the right thing by her. Poor Big Boy the rooster has lost all his tail feathers, his beautiful plume, and has a sore butt to prove it. My new favorite wound treatment is propolis spray, which is a gift from the bees. Great stuff, which I highly recommend for animals and humans alike.

We think this is the same possum who got one of our sitting Cochins about a month ago, but she wasn't in the barn with a rooster, so today's attack was a bold move on his part. He lost his chips, though, and human intervention won the day. Let's hope we can win future battles. I'll keep a fence post handy.
Big Boy before and after the attack. Poor guy.

Out and about

A few days ago the chicks and poults (baby chickens and turkeys) made a brave move to the out of doors. We have been keeping them in cardboard boxes in our dining room, which has gotten very dusty thanks to the dust baths the chickens like to have daily. Barry had finished the chicken 'tractor' and pen for them, so out the went and never looked back.

Here they are trying to decide if this new world is a good one or a bad one. They stood on the entry ramp for most of the day. One little chick came out right away and stayed out. Now it's a job to get them to go in at night. We recently added our cochin chicks into this group and they are getting along fine. Yesterday we were almost wiped out by two hawks who have come to live in our field. They got three of our little cochin chicks before we could stop them. Barry wants to get a gun, I wanted to cover the pen and keep the little chickens in for a few weeks. We covered the pen and are letting the dogs run the field for a few days.

It is very sad to lose an animal that you've watched hatch from the egg and grow up in your barn. We've got another cochin mama hen sitting on eleven eggs. That wasn't the plan as we are tired of the broody things. They just sit on eggs and don't lay them. We try to keep them moving, but this girl had hidden all these eggs in a corner in the feed room and has been sitting on them. I only found them because the roosters were harassing her, and when I punted the lot of them across the field she went running into the barn. I followed her and there she was with her little clutch of eggs. So if anyone is interested in keeping bantam chickens, we'll have a few for sale in the summer. They are lovely little birds, very friendly and compact for urban gardens. If you'd like a testimonial or two I can refer you to our friend, Chicken Coop Mary, who has three of ours from last spring and she's been having a grand old time in East Atlanta with them.


Here is the inside of the new chicken tractor. Very spacious compared to their former box. While this seems small for 27 grown chickens, they will only nest at night and they love being close when they sleep. They will have the run of the field during the day (after they are bigger).







Turkey Day Out


I felt bad for the turkeys now that the chicks had their indoor/outdoor condo, so I got an old rabbit pen the former owners had left behind and I trotted the turkeys out to the yard.

Barry is building a fabulous new turkey apartment for them (bigger than the chickens', they might get jealous), but it isn't finished yet. Once it is I'll have the dish-tv set up and make sure their hot tub is working okay before they inhabit it. Until then they are living on the front screened porch in a pen. They keep growing bigger, so I think we need to move them again soon.
At first they were a little wary of this new place, "outside", but after about 30 minutes they were chirping and singing like crazy. Yes, turkeys sing. I don't know what else to call it, but it sounds like high-pitched whistling but the seem to be talking to each other, and us.

The turkeys are still winning in the "I've got character" contest against the chickens. Don't get me wrong, I really like chickens, that's why I kept them in the city and now have over 50 around the place. But the turkeys are so...well...dog-like is the best way to describe it. They come to the side of the pen when we go out to see them, they chirp and tweet when we talk to them, and a couple of them even 'ask' to be picked up. I'm not joking. Barry has is special turkey (Houdini 1) who always wants to be picked up and carried. I keep reminding Barry that they will be Thanksgiving dinners for people, but I wonder how we are going to say goodbye to all the cheeky birds.