More Chicken Coop Details

I took some more pictures of the movable pen that Kevin made so you could see a few details that weren't finished when I posted about it. We put flight netting over the top and added a pole so that we could walk around in it. Zip ties made the whole thing very quick to assemble. There is not a nail or screw anywhere in the pen. We were going to make it 6' tall but changed it to 4' to accommodate the fencing we had left over from a previous project. Every time I go in there to put feed in the feeders I wished we had gone with the 6' because I usually have my hair up in a clip and it invariably gets snagged in the netting as I am walking bent over. Nice!



I slid a shovel through the fencing to make a fat perch so that Missy, our little handicapped poult, could roost. Her foot was injured, I think from big, fat Flipper stepping on her from when she was tiny and in the pen with him. We kept two poults in with Flipper for company when he hatched so he wouldn't get lonely. Now they are inseparable. Her foot has gotten better and she can perch normally although she has a funny rolling gate and cannot run very fast.



Buddy is attached to the little chicks that were in with him too. When the chicks roost at night Buddy sleeps right below them as close as he can get cause he cannot get up on the roost to be next to them.

Here is a closeup of the gate detail. Kevin used a chain link fence gate hinge for the door. He had to modify it a little cause the plastic pipe was too large.

The top hinge, pretty handy huh.

At work we got something delivered in this huge wooden box so I asked if I could have it and we brought it home. It made a find little chicken house. My attempt at making a ramp is a little rickety but it worked. Flipper looks like a goose now. He is only seven and a half weeks old. Amazingly the turkeys that are older than him are small in comparison. I feel guilty saying this but if you wanted a bird strictly for meat an Ebdon goose would be it. They grow so fast and eat tons of grass and weeds and would need minimal feed once they were a few months old. I guess they reach mature size at like three or four monthe old. (Sorry Flipper and Buddy for saying that)

Speaking of turkeys, here they are and boy do we have a problem. We do not want to put them in with the older birds yet so we have left them roaming the yard close to the house so we could keep an eye on them. (We have a Coopers Hawk that visits our pond looking for frogs. I got to see him swoop down and catch one a couple weeks ago, really cool!) But then the turkeys discovered that the deck rail is a really nice place to roost. Well you can imagine! Eight turkeys walking all over the table and lots and lots of mess under the rail so now they have a little fenced area off by themselves. I loved watching them run all over the yard though. They looked like the dinosaurs on Jurassic Park.

See ya next time,

Beth

New Chicken/Goose/Turkey Pen and New Door

It has been such a busy month that I will have to update with pictures, not much explanation. We have peaches! Really exciting but the only problem is that we did not spray them soon enough. We were not sure what we wanted to use so we got nothing. Consequently, we have infiltrators. We wanted to stick with an organic something but could find nothing, later tried a spray from the local store but we were told that we need to spray in April. Oh well, it's fun seeing the peaches grow even if they will be buggy.

We also have nectarines and pears too. I did not get a picture of the pears but you all know what pears look like.


Here is Buddy and Flipper. They are getting so huge! We take them to the pond every nite for a swim. Look at Flipper, he has the life all stretched out, hanging out by the pond, munching on grass.

The only problem is that, as you can see from the picture below, Flipper would rather lay on the raft with us than swim by himself! He is one lazy goose. He even flops down by his food so he can eat laying down.

Buddy (that is the name we decided on for the younger, grayer gosling) loves to swim. He is so fun to watch, I will try to get a video soon, he swims four or five feet under water at a time.

My new phone is pretty cool. It is a Razor V9, I think. Ever since my camera broke I have been using my phone for my blog pictures. As you can see from the above picture, it even has a frame feature. Kinda cheesy frame choice on my part but awesome anyway.

Our clematis is blooming, a close-up below.

This weekend we decided to finally install our new sliding glass door. BLAH! Way too much work. It is still not done. We worked all weekend, besides having to go to a last minute going away party and all day at our Father's houses for Fathers day, at 9:00pm Sunday with work looming in the morning I said "We will finish it tomorrow!" (It's tomorrow and here I am blogging and he is out there waiting for me.)

Here is the old rotten sill, now all new and not rotten!

Our new door.

Cleo helping us put it together.

The big, huge hole and rain outside!

Here is our new pen. It's made from PVC drain pipe. It is really easy to put together but we cannot put a tarp over it cause it would blow away so they have a house inside of it.

I wrapped the fencing at the bottom with wire to hold it tight.

Here is the door frame and below are the happy chicks to be out of the house and we are glad they are out too.
Here they are running around through the daylilys behaving like little chicks should!

Yay!! It's SUMMER!

Beth

Gosling Update

It seems as if I have a strange gosling. The gentleman that gave me the egg said that they were mostly Ebden, a little bit something else but they would look like an Ebden. Ebdens are all white. Well Flipper is all Ebden looking but the second one is definitly not. The first difference that I noticed was that he seeemed darker, Flipper's newly growing down is snow white but the younger one is darker. Then I noticed some definite dark tail feathers. Very grey, some white but mostly grey. And then it was strange because the baby feathers on top of his head in one spot were alwalys messed up. Well look at him now.

How funny is his head! I guess he must be a tufted variety. Below is a picture of some tufted geese that I found on the web...(sorry if they are copyrighted, believe me I'm not making any profit from these and I would be glad to give you credit if I knew where I found them)...His head looks just like theirs.

You can really see his little fluffy bump in this next picture.

Here he is next to Flipper and you can see how much darker he is. I am so glad they are going to be different. I can't wait til they get bigger and grow all their feathers.

Flipper is Growing!

I can't believe how fast a gosling grows. When compared to our turkeys, the turkeys look like they haven't grown at all!

Check out the before and after photos.

April 30th

May 22nd

We took him with us to my mom's house for the Memorial Day picnic and at first no one was very happy. You see, it was supposed to be a work day and they always think I do really crazy stuff so you can imagine. They were very surprised at how good he was.

They expected him to run all over and that we would have to try and catch him but that is the opposite of a goslings behavior. He never moved farther than 10 feet away at any time. If any one in the group walked away he would follow them crying because either he didn't want them to leave or he thought he should follow them. My cousin's 3 year old really loved him, it's great because he will go up to anyone and let them pet him.

During our picnic he just sat quietly on Kevin's lap while we ate, sleeping for a while and then waking up but really calm and quiet.

I got in touch with the "Goose Mother". She is the nicest lady and gave me all kinds of good advice for an indoor goose. She makes and sells diapers and harnesses for geese. There is a link to her website under the picture below. She takes her geese to Renaissance Fairs where she dresses up as Mother Goose. She also takes them to nursing homes to visit. She has one beautiful Sebastopol Goose named Maggie that actually hugs people with her neck (she wraps it around their neck and hugs tight), when she meets them.

http://www.thegoosesmother.com/index.html

This is a picture from her site, I hope she doesn't mind me posting it. How cute is this little baby with his diaper harness!

Kevin caught a really nice largemouth and a couple crappies but the pictures are really small. My sister sent them to me from her camera but I do not know how to make them bigger or even if I can. I hope you can see them. My Mom and Dad live on a really nice private lake. I was really lucky to have grown up there. We swam, fished with our cane poles and played in the woods all day. I never caught a fish like this though!

Flipper really enjoyed my Moms lake and went in swimming with the kids. All in all we had a great time and everyone loved Flipper and I ended up not have to wash windows!

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Beth

He Swims!

I am not sure who was more scared, him or me. I think it was definitely me.

How to find the Energy................

I have about 15 million things to write about but I would have to write five pages to keep up with all the goings-on here. I have people calling like crazy for turkey poults but I am sold out until the 20th or so. It's so hard because I have to tell people that I will have poults after the 20th but like that old adage "Don't count your turkeys before they hatch" it's hard to believe they will hatch. It still is so exciting every time I see a pipped egg I can't tell you! It takes all my willpower to NOT help them out. I do cheat though and help a little.


I have Americanas hatching and the colors are amazing. Everyone is kinda different. I will go right now and take a picture so you all can see....(It's 7:48, I'll see how long it takes me, cause I have to use my cell phone, my camera died............OK, I'm back and it's 7:54, not bad considering all I have to go through to download them)



Let's see how the pictures turned out






Not too bad.

When this one in the bottom of the picture pipped I could see it's little beak and it was black! I could not wait to see it. It's the only black beaked one. Very cool.

The little one in the center hatched an hour ago, still not sure what color it will be, not quite fluffed up yet.

I love the little one with the eyeliner. When it hatched it eyes looked HUGE! It was the black eyeliner, it looked deformed it eyes looked so big.

We put the babies in with our second gosling. (not Flipper but this one has no name yet, trying very hard to not have him imprint on us!) They think he's mama and won't leave him alone. They freak him out though but he is getting used to them, letting them snuggle up when they sleep. We had originally put this gosling in with Flipper but Flipper was beating the tar out of him. He would grab the feathers on the baby's neck and jerk him all over so we separated them. Flipper is still with two turkeys and he lays with them and tries to groom them. I think they are starting to like it. Very strange to see a giant gosling nuzzling a little turkey. (Little refers only to size as the turkeys are older than Flipper.)

Of course, I had to include a picture of him. All he wants is for us to hold him. He is even bigger now than when this picture was taken, he can reach the top of his cage. with his little beak...or I guess I should say bill. I went in search of a bigger cage today but came up empty handed. I will keep looking because I think we will have him with us in the house for a while.

He has become very attached to us. No one told me that a gosling will imprint on you. While researching goose stuff I found out that a gosling will become so attached that they won't accept other geese or breed or anything. I HAVE A HUGE PROBLEM! Although he does seem happy and kind of content with the turkeys maybe because he was in with the turkeys when he first came out of the incubator.

He is the cutest thing too! He has ten times more personality than the chickens or turkeys we have had. I will take more movies and try to capture his behaviors. So sweet.

See ya everyone, gotta go tuck kids in and turkeys and chicks and a goose!

Beth

Flipper

Here he is!



After deciding on a name, either Olivia if it's a girl or Oscar if it's a boy we found out that there is no way to know if it's a boy or girl for a long long time. We had to come up with a gender neutral name. After throwing out names like Pat, Chris and the like, one of the kids suggested we call him/her Flip Flop.

We shortened it down to Flipper and everyone is happy except me cause I have been singing the theme song to the TV show in my head nonstop for about five days now. "Flipper, Flipper, faster then liiightning, no one you seeeee......is smarter then heeeee". OMG! Can't stand it. Every time I walk past his/her pen I sing it. Sometimes I call him/her Happy Feet cause his (I'll just say his or he from now on)cute little webbed feet are so different than the turkeys. He has a lot more personality too. He tries to groom you when you hold him, nibbling on your shirt or fingers.
One of the remaining two goose eggs pipped yesterday and it is so frustrating having to wait for it to hatch on it's own. They tell you over and over again not to help but it's cute little bill is poked through and it is peeping very sadly. I just know it is saying "Help me help me." It's been about 20 hours since it pipped so I will wait some more.

I will update when it hatches.
Beth