Category Archives: Ducks and Geese

New Arrivals

Posted on by
Reply

We went on our bi-weekly feed run and came home with two baby gosling’s. Remember George the gander we raised from an egg in the incubator a while back, well we got him some company.

Rosie gave us another little heifer on the 25th. She sure does have cute calves. I have decided to keep last years heifer and may keep this one as well. Marla may have to move on to make room. I’ll cross that bridge later.

The weather finally decided to act like spring instead of winter so we got the garden planted.

A couple of weeks ago I had to fix some comb in the bee hives. I checked on them Sunday and all three hives are doing well. I placed some small hive beetle traps in each hive. I haven’t seen any of these pests this year but I don’t want to get messed up like I did last year when I lost all the hives partially to the beetles.

Peach Blossom

Posted on by
Reply

The peach tree is about to explode with blooms. The hens are laying eggs again and we have a hen turkey and goose getting ready to set. Looks like Spring is upon us.

20160310_063734_resized

The calves are growing well. I applied dehorning paste on them several weeks ago. It looks like it worked some on Billie Jo (Jersey cross) but I don’t think it did anything on Mark (black baldy). The paste may have gotten old. I will do it again this weekend with new paste.

20160308_064808_resized20160308_064913_resized

Almost time to plant the garden. Around here we always wait until after Easter. Most years we have one last frost right before Easter. Potatoes will go in this weekend and probably should have gone in sooner than that.

Spring is by far the busiest time of year for me. I just hope I can keep up this year. I sure don’t want another wasted year like the last one where everything got away from me.

Baby Goose

Posted on by
Reply

We have a new baby goose.
Right before our last freeze I gathered up all the eggs that were not being sat on. Duck, goose and chicken and placed them in the incubator. I knew they wouldn’t be any good if they froze. While we haven’t had much luck with goose or duck eggs in the incubator before at least there the eggs had a chance.
We ended up with 3 baby chicks and one baby goose. Lisa named her Georgia and is hoping the name doesn’t end up George. The other eggs didn’t do anything.

20150429_054551_resized_1
Lisa met Mother and Father Goose at the Georgia Renaissance Fair several years ago and makes it a point to stop by to visit with them every time she is there. She decided to buy some of their duck/goose diapers.

20150507_195125_resized20150507_195100_resized

Looks like Georgia isn’t impressed. And would prefer to go naked.

I am glad that I was able to save the few eggs that were good. Last night I went out to check on the goose who had been sitting on 4 eggs. I found one gosling had hatched out but was dead and ants got to the other three eggs as they started to hatch. Such a shame. It would have been the first goslings raised by our remaining pair of geese. I doubt that she will start over so we’ll have to wait until next year.

Ducklings

Posted on by
Reply

While at the feed store this weekend I just couldn’t resist. They has some new ducklings so I got a few of each. For now they are living in the bathtub. Easy on them and on us.

Here they are resting quietly.

IMG-20150401-00030

And here, not so much. They get down right wild when given a little water to play in.

IMG-20150331-00027

They are fun to watch. They try to dive but the water isn’t quite deep enough. They don’t have true feathers yet so we don’t let them swim too long or too often.