Hello!! Again, I have to apologise for not writing; this is the continuation of the Internet antenna saga. About two months ago, the antenna fell down off the roof of the house with a great gust of wind. After two weeks of no Internet, Gnome valiantly climbed up to the roof of the house and attached the antenna back on. At first the Internet was running okay…a bit slower but good enough. Then we had another windy night and the antenna swivelled out of reception. For the last 4 weeks or so, Internet has been on and off, emails are eventually received and Internet access practically non-existent. Today, it was a bright and clear with no rain for days so Gnome decided that he would climb up once again. The antenna originally pointed towards Big Falls so Gnome brought up his compass to make sure that it was pointing North. Here we are again…back on-line.

This is also a message to Gnome’s mother….we should be able to contact this weekend!!

What has been happening? You will be pleased to hear that machinery is working once again and we are in the process of cleaning up the farm.

Other news…we have a goosie story to tell you…

Last week, I was doing my usual goosie evening feed which involves a massive goosie stampede, lots of jostling and squawking and a Munchkin with a bucket of corn. Every evening we have goosie time and all goosie factions return from the pond or foraging to congregate for the big event. This gives me a chance to do a quick head count and I immediately noticed that my five baby geese were missing. After feeding time, Gnome and I wandered through the farm (about 20 acres) scouring the area for the missing geese. There was no trace of them and we arrived back to the house upset and distraught over the disappearance. At night, we couldn’t sleep for worry…what if a jaguar or a snake took them out…or, maybe it was a snatch and grab….arrrghhh!!! The next morning, we walked down the main road towards the nearby village. Still no trace and we kept on looking up in the sky for signs of buzzards swirling. We informed somebody in the village that we had lost 5 geese and headed back home with dismay.

Every evening, I hoped that my five goosies would suddenly turn up and join the corn eating mayhem. There was still no sign of them but I still remained quietly hopeful.

One week after the geese went missing, a boy from the village hailed me at the gate. He told me that he had seen “five big ducks” behind the fence on the opposite farm. In the middle of night, he was cycling pass and stopped to hear the “five ducks” squawking at our geese on the farm. He said that in the din of the ruckus, he realised that the five geese were trying to move towards the noise of our geese. When he shone his flash-light in their direction, they quickly ran away. The boy’s account of the “five ducks” gave me renewed hope…

Gnome and I were very excited and by the turn of events. Yesterday afternoon, we attempted search and rescue ; we obtained permission from the owner of the farm and went traipsing all over the cacao fields. Gnome called “Goosie!!” and I called “Goosie, Goosie!!” as we searched high and low with no luck. After an hour, I started to feel the exhaustion from the afternoon heat…I met back with Gnome and sat down by the shade of a tree. I was ready to give up…

Tears rolled down my face and I was about to tell Gnome that I was ready to go home. I felt dizzy, tired and discouraged. At this point, we both stopped talking and heard a, “qwack!”

It was a very soft “qwack!” but nonetheless it was a “qwack!”

We stilled ourselves to listen again and then heard the crashing noise of heavy webbed feet on bush and then we saw five little heads peak out from the long grass behind us…

More tears rolled down my eyes, “My goosies!!”

The geese were panting and exhausted as if they had walked a long way from the back of the land to our position at the front. They were too confused and delirious to be driven or led so we ended up carrying all five geese. Just picture us walking with geese stuffed under our arms…I had three of them and Gnome had two. We could hardly get the farm gate open with our burden!

The geese are back home and safe. What a nice ending!

Another Blog post to let you know that we are still here and that this is indeed Goosie time. We have ten now which is a wonderful surprise since we thought that our eggs had been spoiled by a power-cut that stopped our incubator for the whole day. Well, here are the first four that are now 4 weeks old…they are at the ugly stage when they are just starting to feather. They have their own enclosed area to walk about and I take them for supervised foraging walks every day. These ones have black beaks (mostly) so they are probably the Chinese Goosie type.

We have another two Chinese Goosies that are two weeks old. I don’t seem to have a picture of them. They have been moved to a cage outside…these two are stupid and daft and can’t work out what to eat and what not to eat despite Munchkin teaching them. Gnome says that not all geese can be geniuses. 😉

Okay, so I need to show-case the last four; they are fat, fluffy, golden-yellow with short necks so we reckon that this lot are the German type of goosie. They are a lot noisier, more clingy and are constantly chattering amongst each other, at you and to anything (even the cat?) that might care to listen.

More pictures of the new babies:

They are very cute and fun at this age:

And another picture:

I will write soon again to give you an update of the farm activities. Until then, have a lovely weekend.

It has been very, very hot and unbearable lately. We just had a brief rain yesterday which managed to fill up our basins again. Oh, we must thank the Goddess of Goosies for her generosity again this year! Even with the incubator shut-down, we have more goosies to enjoy. I had been checking the double goose nest everyday and still there was nothing; on Wednesday, we were out of the farm for the whole day and we got home late. I was exhausted and convinced myself that there was no need to peak under Mama Goosie. However, Gnome insisted so I stomped outside and had a quick look and it was a good thing he insisted. There were two little fluffed up goosies twittering away…hungry and thirsty…these Mamas seem to be so broody that they don’t snap out of setting even with the sound of a gosling. So, here they are! We have two more and we are very pleased!

That’s all for today! Try to keep cool!!

Good Morning and a Good Friday to you all. Yes, we have four lovely goosies now. The incubator eggs that were placed under our auspicious double broody goosie nest has proven to be a success. Gnome remarked on the fact that we didn’t need an incubator since all our mother goosies are extremely broody. Yes, but we read on the Internet that female geese were bad setters!

Here are G1, G2, G3 and G4 (The collective group called G-Force)…hmmm…not very imaginative names Munchkin!

I can’t put them all in my apron pockets so I have them two at a time. The oldest one is growing rapidly and at day 12 it is 250g (about 1/2lb). They alternate between the fish tank, the sink and I will start taking them for supervised walks outside…yes that’s right…I will adopt the mamma goosie role. In the last two days, I have separated the two older ones and the two younger ones because the first two were hogging all the food.

Here are the baby pictures:

Goosies sleeping:

Wishing you all a Good Day!!

If anyone has been following our posts, they will know that we unfortunately lost all our guinea pigs to a pesky possum (that we subsequently made into curry possum) and as a result of this, we lost our crèche for the goslings.

So, this year I ended up with the task of rearing the goosies from Day 0 to adolescence (3 to 6 months). Note that Goosie Mothers are usually not the best of mothers and they can be quite haphazard in their approach.  That’s why I volunteered to raise the geese.

I thought that it was useful to note the differences in rearing the goslings personally and the lessons that I have learned from these last 6 months.  Yes, goosie breeding/hatching season has come to a close and the reign of wrathful, goosie terror has ended.  🙂

Goosie Lessons.

The goslings, this year, were raised on high protein (combo dog food and cooked black beans).  Their food dish was continuously topped up so that they had access to food continuously for the first 3 weeks.  I had to teach each one to eat the food initially by sticking its beak in the food and tapping on the food dish with my finger (to mimic the beak of a mother goose).  There was one batch of goslings that refused to “take” to the food and I had to end up giving them milk.  That was a horrible experience because they splashed and sploshed about in milk covering themselves from head to tail; it got quite disgusting and smelly and I am not sure if they even got to drink any of it!

At day 7 (later when they got too horribly noisy and smelly it was shifted to day 3) they were moved from the fish tank in the house to a welded wire cage outside.  At this point, as-well as the usual food, they were introduced to all manner of greens so that they could get used to eating the variety of weeds around the house.  I noticed that although well protected, the cage afforded the little geese the opportunity to observe their environment (ie. lots of rowdy, trouble-making adult geese) without feeling threatened.  This is actually a significant point to make because the guinea-pig raised geese were kept in shallow concrete houses and when they were set free around the farm, they were very easily upset and frightened; so much so that it took them six months to find the confidence to graze away from the house area.

After day 21, they were big enough to be transferred into a metal movable cage.  They were allowed to roam free during the day and were herded into the cage in the evening with a big bowl of high protein food.

After about day 35, they were allowed to roam free without needing to go into the cage at night.  By this time, they were about the size of a chicken (4 to 5lbs) and could fend for themselves…even get nasty with the drake.  Their weights were consistently increasing  with continuous grazing.  I still gave them protein titbits in the morning and evening to get them into a routine of friendly, rumbustious behaviour.

I kept a diary with food weights and goosie weekly weights.  With each batch, I was actually able to improve on weight gain and towards the end, I was able to double weight gain every 7 days.  Thanks to Gnome for encouraging me to be more scientific and methodical; this has allowed me to improve, tweak and make adjustments to turn my geese into healthy, happy birds.

Conclusion:

The new Munchkin Mum method has been positive and yielded better results than the previous guinea pig rearing.  This year’s geese are a lot bigger, friendlier and happier.  A happy goose goes a long way!  The energy and time that I put into the goslings was definitely worth it and I gained a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction from the whole experience.  So much so, that I am ready to do it again next year.