Christmas Goose

Two years ago I decided it would be a good idea to branch out from my usual poultry realm (I had pretty much only raised chickens up until this point) and attempt to raise some geese. So I dug out my trusty Murry McMurry hatchery catalog and went ahead and ordered 12 goslings which cost me $80. Looking back on this purchase, I'm a little surprised I went through with it; after all you can get 25 chickens for about $30. Apparently I was blinded by pastoral visions of large, beautiful, stately geese gracing my yard, leisurely munching on bugs with me in the background admiring them lovingly. Little did I know that there would be little leisure and pretty much no love in my efforts to raise these geese.

When the goslings arrived in a box at the post office I got them home and released them into my usual baby chick brooder set-up which involves a children's plastic swimming pool, a heat lamp, straw bedding and food and water. Right away I was shocked by the stupidity of these small, fluffy dinosaur-look-alike birds. The first thing they did was to launch themselves directly into their water source with the apparent aim to get as wet as possible. The chick watering device is specifically designed so that chicks can get water without getting their fluff wet, it’s a mason jar screwed onto a special cap that allows for a constant supply of water in a small trough. Anyone who has raised small birds, whether it’s chickens, ducks, geese or what-have-you knows that a wet baby bird is pretty much a dead baby bird and sure enough I lost several of these birds right away.

To combat these chronic swimmers, I added a second heat lamp to their brooder with the idea that if I couldn’t keep them dry at least I could keep them very, very warm. This stroke of genius worked for the most part and when it was time to put them in their pen/yard I emerged with six healthy goslings (yes, I started with 12).

A side note on this lost half dozen: at this point in time I was pregnant and like many pregnant women, I was somewhat emotional. I vividly remember being very distraught over the deaths of these six birds and telling my husband that I really was not a very good mother goose and had no idea how I would do with an actual human baby. As it turns out everything went fine with the actual human baby and we now have an actual human toddler.

O.K. so then I was feeling better about the whole situation because these six geese were doing well and I actually got to watch them do goose things outside. I especially enjoyed watching them splash around in their “pond” which was actually a children’s swimming pool (did I mention that children’s swimming pools are really handy?).

Unfortunately, this period of goose-bliss did not last long for me because this was about the time that they started getting nasty. I’m talking hissing menacingly, charging at me with their goofy elongated necks stretch out gnashing their goose jaws and flapping their monstrous wings at me (the flap of a goose wing still strikes fear into my heart).

Needless to say I began admiring them from afar. I devised elaborate feeding plans where I’d distract them by flinging something really delicious like leftover mac and cheese into their yard then wielding a sturdy stick, I’d run into their pen and frantically fill their food and water dishes. Believe me, filling/cleaning their pond was no picnic.

Did you know that geese have a wingspan of five to six feet? And that their wings are so strong that they could actually break your arm? Also did you know that geese have serrated bills which are capable of ripping and tearing human flesh? Good info to know for the novice goose raiser indeed.

Additionally, did you know that geese fight ruthlessly and sometimes even to the death amongst themselves? They hit each other with their wings. It sounds like a fist fight except instead of hollering like human fighters they honk in a very loud and obnoxious manner (did I mention that they honk in a loud and obnoxious manner pretty much every waking second of their lives?). As a result of their aggressive nature, I spent many a tense moment out in the goose yard breaking up fights with a snow shovel. You can imagine how unsurprised I was one day to find a goose laying out in their yard dead, the obvious loser of a particularly ruthless fight.

Not only were the geese mean to people and themselves but they also were mean to other animals, especially the chickens. In one particularly snow shovel worthy incident, a gander had the neck of one of my hens clasped in his bill while he proceeded to bash her into the ground and then flip her up so that her nearly lifeless body smacked against his back. Miraculously, this hen survived the attack, sadly another did not. At this point in my goose-raising endeavors I was pretty much convinced that I had raised some sort of devil-spawn-type strain of geese.

Even after the chicken murdering incident and all the fights, I still was interested in raising geese. I’m not exactly sure why, maybe it was the initial investment, maybe it was because of the challenges of raising the goslings or perhaps I just like to sit back (pretty far back) and enjoy their bad-assness.

My husband and I butchered two of the geese and served them for Christmas Eve dinner at our house. It was a long and sordid affair raising these geese and luckily they tasted great. We did keep one gander and one hen, perhaps we’ll get some goslings out of the deal.

A goat tail

One of our critters is a Boer goat named Jolene. Boers are a meat breed. Jolene is mostly white with a long brown head that sports floppy ears (shockingly adorable). Jolene is reasonably naughty.

I bought her at an auction last spring along with two sheep. When I got them home I unloaded these three critters into what I thought was a goat-proof pen in our barn. After hanging out with her sheep companions for about an hour, Jolene jumped out a rather small window (maybe two feet by two feet) which was located in the pen about four feet off the floor. I was shocked to look out my kitchen window and see her sashaying around the yard in nervous little goat jumps.

After her escape, my husband, Cass and some of our family members spent three days chasing and tracking her through the woods by our house. She never went very far (actually she never left the property except for that one time when she was spotted hanging out under the neighbors' kid's swing set). She was a very frustrating goat to chase (not that any goat is unfrustrating to chase) in that she would hide in the brush, then when you spotted her she would sense you (I think perhaps goats have an extra people-sensing sense just for when they escape) and then run away again and hide.

So after the whole chasing and tracking thing didn't pan out for us, I decided to take a different approach and dumped large quantities of grain all over our yard in little piles. My husband was at first skeptical, but it did lure her in and she started sneaking into our yard for treats. This seemed like progress to me; however our first attempts to apprehend her failed miserably. During one of these attempts I actually had her cornered in the barn, certain I could catch her I flung myself through the air in an effort to land on top of her. She let out an ear-splitting blaaaa! , sailed over a five foot tall gate and sprinted off into the woods for another night of camping.

We finally caught her one night and it was a joyous occasion indeed. When we got home that night at about 9:30 it was dark and raining pretty hard. Cass decided to take a look around and see if she was hiding out any where on the farm. When he spotted her in the milk house he lunged for her. Used to being lunged at by now, this did not phase Jolene in the slightest. She easily side-stepped him and made a break for the doorway with Cass close on her heels.

She got to the driveway and was headed for the woods. All the frustration caused from chasing this goat for the past three days had built up in my husband and gave him super-human fastness. He actually managed to run fast enough to cut her off, forcing her to change directions. Obviously panicked, the goat ran into our garage.

Cass stormed in after her, closing doors and barricading her in as best he could. In a fit of desperateness, Cass armed himself with a fishing net that happened to be hanging on the wall and charged her. Cornered against two solid walls and being approached by a somewhat crazed man wielding a net Jolene let out a bellow that must have come from the depths of her little cloven goat hooves. Cass remained steadfast and unperturbed. He tackled and hogtied amongst bleats of complaint and flailing legs.

Meanwhile, I’m totally oblivious to all these momentous events (and Cass’ earnest calls for help) and am engrossed in putting our small child to bed. When I come out of the house to investigate, I find Cass holding a netted Jolene in a wheel barrow.

Needless to say, we covered the window in the pen with wire. A few days later we came across two pigmy goats, which we sent into the pen to live with Jolene and the two sheep. A few weeks after that their pasture was ready, so with quite a few reservations about whether the fence would hold her, we released her into two acres of lush grass ensconced in a four foot high fence (really the equivalent of not really a fence at all for Jolene).

It’s now coming into winter and Jolene has never escaped nor tried to escape. We think it’s the pigmy goats that saved us that headache. Jolene bonded with the pigmies and would never want to leave them, and since the pigmies are way too little (at least I think they are) to jump the fence, Jolene doesn’t jump it either.

I’ve got to say that while I’m happy that we found a way to keep her in, I am a tad disappointed that I never got to see Cass coral and net that goat.

Gardens are Put to Bed

Last week I put my gardens to bed. It's always kind of sad to do this, after I've spent hours and hours out there tilling, planting, weeding, watching things grow, harvesting ect. Now I've picked everything and plowed it under. It looks bleak, one of my good friends calls fall "the season of death".

However, there is one last hoorah of sorts in the end of the growing season; the cover crop. A cover crop is grown for it's fertilizing properties, it's also known as green manure. Green manure is not to be confused with it's cousin, regular manure, which is of course animal poop. Not that there's anything wrong with regular manure it's just stinkier though some folks would argue it's a good stink.

This year I've planted winter wheat as my cover crop. So now I get to watch it sprout and turn green as the leaves and snow fly. Then next spring I'll till it under and thus revitalize the soil, and then it all begins again.

I plant approximatly 40 different varieties of vegetables plus some flowers, herbs and a few berries. Growing a big variety helps protect me from total crop failure. After all, every year is a good year for growing some things and every year is a terrible year for growing other things.

The only downfall of planting a whole lotta different veggies is picking them all out, it's gets a little daunting. But it's a good daunting. Let the seed catalog season begin!

Chickens!

We raise chickens for eggs, meat and entertainment. Chickens are hilarious animals! It's really a lot of fun to watch them peck, scratch, coo, cackel, crow, roll in the dirt and get into spats with each other.

Our chicken eggs are really delicious. They have a very dark orange yolk which is due to them being mostly free range. I've observed that chickens that are left to their own devices spend a large part of their day wondering around finding things to eat like bugs or different kinds of grass and weeds. I think their eggs taste better when they are allowed to be free range. The only times our chickens are not free range is when there's something extra-yummy for them to eat in the garden, like cherry tomatoes or kohlrabi then they have to live in their yard. When they are living in their yard and eating feed, their egg yolks get lighter in color and the eggs taste more like store-bought eggs. Well, not quite that bad, I think store-bought eggs have very little flavor, have unaturally white shells and disturbinbly yellow yolks.

Chickens are very social and like to hang out with each other. If one finds a treat, like a virgin vine of ripe cherry tomatoes, he or she will alert other chickens near by, then they all desend on the plant and happily eat every single red fruit. They also have little spats and disputes and sometimes cluck menacingly at each other. At one time we had nine roosters who constantly had arguments and occasional all-out brawls. That didn't last too long though as they were nearly butchering weight.

We generally eat all roosters once they get to butchering weight, which takes them about a year around here. We do like to keep one rooster on hand though since it's nice to hear them crow. Right now our token rooster is a very pretty, somewhat petite, really colorful fellow that I named Pioneer. I got Pioneer at last year's Pioneer Day which is a winter-time town festival held in Ridgeland, WI. At noon the good people of Ridgeland toss chickens off the roof of their post office and if you catch one, you get to keep it. It's really a lot of fun and Pioneer is a great rooster.

The only problem with raising chickens is that everything likes to eat chicken. This includes (but is not limited to); racoons, skunks, dogs, coyotes, owls, weasels, chicken hawks, eagles, geese, pigs and of course humans.

The night before butchering day, which is generally in the fall or spring, we put all the chickens that we plan to eat in one of those big plastic dog kennels. We do this at night because chickens sleep really hard and thus are very easy to catch when they are roosting. Then in the morning we chop their heads off one by one and hang them by their feet from our clothes line. After that we dunk them in hot water, pull out all their feathers, chop off their feet, wrap them in freezer paper and toss them in the freezer. Delish!