Maternity Mayhem

A first tiny turkey emerges.

As is usual for here, our poultry 'breeding programme' has long since left behind the  realm of "a bit organised" and is accelerating towards "Ah well, what harm can it do?" Regular readers will know that we were steadily building up a little kindergarten of Mums, each with a well disciplined band of chicks at foot, all fussing around Mum, coming when called, enjoying being shown how to scratch in the dirt, what was food and what wasn't, how to dust-bathe, where to safely drink and so on.

....and this year's first gosling.

A friend on the Internet who breeds only nice beautiful Buff Orpingtons and 'tweets' as @TheFloofLady has me smiling every morning with a series of 'Good Morning Floofs!' videos which show the same - nice neat groups of Mum with babies at foot. I am in envy of her pens of identical hens and chicks and her organisation.

2 turkeys now for the 2 Mums

Our gang had started with Silvergirl, who went broody in the bad old "Beast from the East" days and hatched 5. They all growed up now but still hang as a little group (of 4, one vanished). This gang were quickly followed, you may recall, by a grey hen who hatched 6, Shtumpy who managed 5, and then Donaldina (in the duck house) who came off with 7 babies. I hope these numbers are right - you do tend to lose  track.

The (now) 7 ducks have now settled on the pond as their
'safe place'

While all that was going on we had a random outbreak of everybody going broody in the Tígín (tool shed) and quickly got out of hand with stray hens climbing on the nests to drop in an extra egg, or climbing in to lay and decided to stay overnight brooding the displaced Mum's original clutch. If Mum was a less dominant hen, she'd just have to sit there clucking her frustration till the usurper would let her back on. One went broody on nothing at all (it's quite common) and I slipped 7 turkey eggs under her. Sometimes you'd see a little pile of 6-7 eggs, apparently abandoned in the nest. At other times there seemed to be 4 hens all piled in there squishing each other out of the way in their keen-ness to contribute some broody-warmth.

You do what you can in terms of sorting them out, pulling the usurpers off, creating private cages round the known broodies, stealing back new eggs which you know were not there yesterday, but it is not an exact science. Luckily, hen maternity instinct comes to your rescue at this point and the Mums do not actually fight over the babies, but go into a Mum-and-Aunt mode, sharing the rearing to start with. Later, one just seems to take over the whole clutch and the other goes back to the flock to rejoin the rooster(s). So, at present, as well as our kindergarten of para 3, we have two hens minding 4 baby turkeys, 2 hens minding one chick. We have also lost ace-Mum 'Shtumpy' to the fox, so her 4 babies, at 5 weeks are now orphans. They will do OK. She was a good Mum and rears them tough. She would normally kick them out at 6 weeks anyway.

A good job tackled gently. Our collection of rather fragile
tubs are getting emptied, moved and refreshed.

The geese are also starting to hatch some goslings and now, with Gander George in charge these are being brought out into the sunshine. Elizabeth is in charge at the moment and tells me there are currently 3. Sorry about the rough pictures of these new kids so far. I will try to get some better, cuter pics for the next post.

Swarm lure box gets some interest.

Finally, on breeding (of sorts), I was delighted to note that my hive-bee swarm lure box has caught the attention of a local swarm (possibly, but by no means certainly, our own). The front is covered in bees and there is plenty of coming and going through the entrance hole. No counting chickens yet - this box now needs to sit for at least 6 weeks to establish whether we have a valid, queen-right colony or just some gang of scouts sniffing about. All good clean fun as our drought and blue skies continue.

Tweet Tweet

This little mite hatches yesterday (we think) and manages to get
out of the nest. We find him cheeping frantically and waddling
round the shed floor. Fear not, all ends well. 

A Birth is Announced! Best news, I expect, for this post is that we finally have a hatch of goose eggs, this a good 2 weeks after the "due date" for the original eggs (27th May). The reason for this is that the 3 Mum/Auntie geese keep leppin' in and out of the nest after #1 goes broody and the eggs you set get trampled. These will be more recent eggs. Our goose breeding is definitely chaotic.

Curator-ing the @IrelandsFarmers Twitter account

This little mite announced his presence with frantic loud cheeping you could hear across the yard even through the excited honking of 4 adult geese, He'd got out of the nest which means a 4-5 inch "fall" out of the former concrete cattle-trough in which they nest and was a bit lost running round the floor, not trying very well to get back into the nest. It could have ended badly. We had one gander one year so annoyed by the appearance of this new, noisy, scurrying "rat" that he grabbed it by a wing and threw it across the shed, badly damaging it.

But not THESE parents. They lower their necks and chunter at him encouragingly from close range so that he stands up to his full 4 inches of height and wobbles his head proudly. The gander (Gorgeous George) has amazed all of us by being even better a dad than the ladies are mums or aunts. They get distracted, he stays focused. All 4 would protect the little fella with their lives and get very excited and angry at anyone who comes near. That was my problem. If I needed to rescue him back to the nest I knew I would need the chainsaw helmet, gloves, a coat with thick sleeves and so on. A relief then at 6 pm ish to see him back in the nest and now accompanied by a sibling. I can sleep easy and undamaged! Wish the little ones luck.

The Hubbards at Day 5 are growing a-pace. They have lost the
spherical look and already have white wing feathers.

This, though, seems to have been a week where we have both "worked" for hours without actually achieving anything around the farm, not a stroke of weeding, mowing or tidying. For Liz there has been the normal working week plus all the politics to follow, both in the US (Comey's testimony to the Senators) and in the UK (May's snap election and subsequent need to get into bed with the DUP).

Potential fruit #1 : Cherries

Liz always stays up for the results and normally takes the day after as holiday to sleep and recover. This time she was denied the holiday by boss John who suddenly had a funeral to attend, so she had to go in "even if she slept for most of it". The office must be manned and the phones answered at least from 09:30 to 13:30, Mon-Fri. In the end she gave up on the  voting coverage at 03:30, slept a while, worked the morning, then caught up by sleeping from 3 till 6 pm. There's dedication.

My 'job' was to be 'Curator' of the @IrelandsFarmers Twitter account, the voice of Twitter-using Irish farming for the week from Monday morning (5th June) to Sunday evening, tomorrow. Most of my readers, I know, have nothing to do with Twitter even if they are regulars on Facebook. It is seen as too 'ephemeral', sound-byte-ish, fleeting and short lived. You post your comment of 140 characters max and if no-one's paying attention it vanishes down the screen quickly replaced by the next Tweet. It is seen as the medium of smart, office, city types clip-clopping across marble floors in their heels, their thumbs and noses glued to the ever-on expensive smart phones and 'tablets'. It is used by vacuous, brainless celebrities and, of course, Donald Trump

Potential fruit #2 :Plums

Stick with it, though, and you can find sensible, intelligent chatter within and between groups of like-minded souls, whether your thing is politics, news, Ireland or more specialist subjects like farming or even smallholdering. When this happens, someone will generally decide that the subject "needs an account" on Twitter so they set one up and start trawling for members to join them. In this case they give the helm of the account to a different person each week, the "Curator". Friends of the blog may recall that I have curated the @smallholderIRL account 3 times now and I love having the extra following (numbering thousands of people all round the world) for the week with whom to share my news, pictures, anecdotes and banter.

Potential fruit #3 : "Irish Peach" variety of apple

All well and good. Small Holdering is the home turf and I'd know a good few people on that group through Facebook or in real life. I am happy to go on that one and strut my stuff, reasonably confident of a sympathetic reception and not too much "trolling" (idiots who are just out to argue and spoil the chat). But then I was invited to curate the 'proper' farmers' one @IrelandsFarmers. I accepted but if I'm honest I was a bit nervous. How would they accept me, this wannabee farmer, blow-in, smallholder and a Brit besides?

Potential fruit #4 : (pea sized) Peaches

I needn't have worried - it has gone really well with 95% of the stuff getting favourable comment ('Likes' and 'Re-tweets') and only the odd one completely blanked or ignored. I have covered a good range of stuff - the holding here and its stock, equipment, activities as well as what I like to do when NOT farming and some anecdotes on disasters and triumphs. One post I was very pleased with had me showing that picture of the house circa 1900 alongside one of me sitting out front on the mini-horse and cart. As I go to press I have just looked in and that one has been seen by 6713 people, 93 have said they 'like' it and 16 have shared it on ("re-tweeted" it). I seem to have done OK and I am delighted. I have to hand the tiller back at 6pm tomorrow. It is quite tiring and you are tied to the PC (no smart-phone for me!) frequently so I will not be sad to finish but I guess the 'owner' will happily have me back when the rota comes round again.... next year, maybe.

A poor blackbird gets dismantled overnight
in the new kitchen. We suspect feline
involvement. 

What else have we been at? I was out at the archery coach's place  putting the cover back on our enormous "gala tent" (mini marquee) ready for the summer activities, helped only by the lady of the house (Niamh) and a friend (Karl, an Austrian lad). Hard work in quite a brisk wind but very enjoyable and, like the curating, good to get it done.

We do get to eat out sometimes!

For Liz tonight a "Mystery night out" for the Lisacul Players, the amateur dramatics group still a-glow from their very successful performance of "Cupid Wore Skirts" a few months back. They had no idea where they were being taken, only that they had to show up at the village cross-roads by quarter past 7 a bit glammed up. One of the lads was organising it and he was keeping very tight lipped. Small huddles of actors formed (plus Liz and Director Tom C) frantically trying to work it out from the time, the need for €20 as a share of the mini-bus hire and their knowledge of 'Derek' (organiser) where they might be bound. One actor was praying that he'd not take them anywhere with Country music - she can't abide that, she said.

Well. Now they know. I have just had a text from Liz to say they are at a place called "The Oarsman" in Carrick on Shannon. She will no doubt fill us all in on the standard of the place's catering and the presence or absence of good aul' boys slapping their thighs, plucking their banjos and shouting 'Yeeee Harrr!' Y'all have the biggest time now!

George and the Ladies' Christmas

Red Kuri Squash - nice fudgy texture when roasted.

Hot on the heels of my 'Wren Boys' post comes another tradition from these parts which was new to me, that of Ladies' Christmas. Mrs Silverwood's post in Facebook has it thus. “Nollaig na mBan” or “Little Women’s Christmas” is an old custom that’s still celebrated by women all over Ireland. It goes back to the days when large families were the norm. Men never lifted a finger in the house to help, and were never expected to. If a man washed the dishes, he would be called an “auld woman” by other men. No full blooded Irish man was prepared to risk that!

Ominous sky precedes our latest "Category Orange" storm, Christine

But each year, after the Christmas holiday, tired women finally got a break – for one day, at least. On January 6th (the same day as the Epiphany), men would take over of the housework, offering women a chance to go out to relax with each other." Nollaig na mBan would be pronounced 'Nollag na Morn' or there abouts. Now call me a cynic but I think this tradition might be more 'fondly dreamed about' than actually happening. I cannot see those kind of blokes, Irish or otherwise, who'd let their women do all the work and never lift a finger, suddenly bringing their women folk tea and toast in bed on Day 12 and happily volunteering to knock up a delicious curry for when they get back from the pub.

George and the author. Note rainbow.

Readers who have been with me for the past 12 months, will know of our goose in-breeding problem. Our first three geese, Goosey, Goocey and Gander joined us last January advertised as a breed-able trio and we didn't know enough then to spot that Gander had serious wry-tail (or to realise that this might be a problem). We also suspect that they may have been a sibling group possibly even from the same clutch, brother and sisters. They settled in and got nice and clean and healthy; it was when they started breeding that we got some problems - infertile and dead-in-shell goslings, deformed babies with necks twisted round, goslings who went lame after a month or two, completely losing the motor control of their legs or just fading and dying. Out of 17 eggs incubated, we ended up with just 2 full grown young ones.

We decided to cease breeding with these three birds and to either just collect eggs (which one of the geese is still producing every other day all through Christmas and the New Year) or to swap out the gander so that we could out-cross rather than in-breed. Step forward then, our friends Carolyn and Charlotte of the miniature horses who had come out of geese after all sorts of fun and games with mink attacks but had been left with one lonely successful gosling.

This bird, named George even before anyone could sex him was hand reared by Charlotte and is as dotty and tame as anything, loving to have his neck tickled and to be cuddled and handled. As he was on his own, he grew up with Charlotte's motley mixture of call ducks and 'Swedish' ducks and most recently was running with a couple of drakes whom he used to marshall and follow around. We THINK he is a gander. A friend of Charlotte's who keeps a lot of geese thinks he is, from the stance and behaviour but admittedly did not pick him up to check his equipment.

George meets his women (He is closest to camera)

To cut a long story short, we have swapped out 'Gander' with 'George' today and George, after an hour in a holding pen to make sure they'd not fight and to let him see his new surroundings in peace, is now released into the orchard with the girls. They were a bit shouty when their previous fella suddenly disappeared, perhaps anxious to attract him back, but seem to have settled down now with George. I am hoping they have bonded enough to be able to shepherd all three 'home' tonight and shut them up in the relatively confined space of their sleeping quarters. I may have to quarter them apart for this first night. So.... welcome aboard George.

Nearly finished. Raglan sweater.

In other news we are currently surviving the recent wind storms (latest was named Christine; I don't know when Atlantic anti-cyclones started to get names) with, thankfully, no more damage. We experimented with a red kuri squash, a gift from the Silverwoods, and found that roasted it has a lovely delicate flavour and a fudgy texture. We will keep some seeds and try to get it to grow in our calf muck heap. Liz has almost finished my raglan knit sweater, the biggest thing she has attempted in this recent burst of the craft. Meanwhile we are sploshing about in wellies with mud everywhere after the recent, seemingly relentless rain, and wishing spring would come and it would all dry out a bit.

Small Obsessions

Back before we actually bought these geese we had read that they have nice, amusing personalities with their own idiosyncratic and funny ways. Simon had told us that they get funny little obsessions for no apparent reason which they then cling to like a terrier with a stick, returning time and again to that specific place and thing. If it is a particular fruit tree and maybe a loose flap of bark, they (or maybe just one of them  who has got the idea into his/her head) will worry and worry at it making the tear bigger and bigger till, potentially, they have ring barked and killed the tree. We have tree guards round our orchard trees for that reason. Many trees now have thoroughly chewed lower branch tips.

Goose 'worry-hole'?

We have also had them nibbling and nibbling at a particular bit of ground which looks, to me, like any other. Maybe there we a worm there once which they fancied. The work away at it from all angles till they create a little conical hole in the mud, roughly goose-head size and as deep as they can reach. Obviously when it rain the hole fills up with water and they seem to leave it alone but when it's dry they are back. In the case pictured it is right where I throw down their breakfast grain so, inevitably, some falls down the hole and then there's great excitement as they gather round, heads lowered over the hole, honking loudly.

We love their personalities, too. They are a tight knit group. The 'goslings' have now grown up to the point where they are difficult to tell from the adults. We know, of course, that Goosey and Goocie have black markings in particular places and Gander is the big, wry-tailed, upright boy, usually at the back, but the only real way to tell them now is that the grown ups have that saggy belly between their legs which older geese get, while the 'babies' have tight, smooth under-carriage.

Blue (left) and Rolo at breakfast

These guys, regular readers will know, are our first attempt at breeding geese and all has not gone well because the 'parent birds' we bought as a breeding trio turned out to be, we are sure, fully or recessive 'wry-tailed' as well as being, almost certainly, a sibling group, i.e. brother and two sisters. Unfortunately, therefore, we have been wickedly in-breeding and our first batch have, in many cases, had hatching or subsequent developmental problems and have either died or been culled out, leaving us with only these 2 'babies' from 17 eggs. Not a good score! We have been a bit dispirited by this and frustrated by our "inability to keep them alive" and have doubts about whether we want to be 'in' geese at all. We have a possible option on replacing the gander with one named George, hand reared by our friends down the road (if he turns out to be a boy) but if not we may just keep them for the eggs. Apart from anything else, I am not happy having to slaughter them. I'm not 'happy' doing rabbits or chooks, to be truthful but I can manage it well enough when it needs doing. I think maybe I love geese in a more complex way and cannot, in my head, see them as just food. My problem, I guess, not anything I should be unloading on the reader.

Bubble with her 'bum' feathers in pin. 

Ah well. Enough of this. Today Liz is back from the UK having done her stint of house-minding for Diamond and John. I must walk the dogs now and then grab some lunch before nipping out to Knock Airport to meet her from the plane. It will be good to have her back in the fold.

A Gosling Hatch but then more Drama than you Need.

No pictures on the gosling yet - it all happened a bit fast and we were not grabbing cameras. In brief (well, fairly brief) we'd been talking to Carolyn today and we were all feeling a bit downbeat about gosling hatches, this being Day 31 and no action yet. Then Liz was taking a breather in the back yard after a long day (of which more later) and she suddenly heard a commotion in the goose house - hissing and honking. We could see a little wet newly hatched gosling in one of the nests and jumped to the conclusion that the geese might be fighting over it. We raced to try to separate the geese by sliding a camping table in between the nests but only ended up causing more excitement, trauma and everybody jumping off the nests and racing out to meet the gander who had by now come running at all the noise.

Everybody calmed down and eventually returned to the goose house but nobody seemed to want to go near this new, wet, wriggling cheeping 'monster' who had suddenly appeared in the nest. We now think the hissing was probably the geese's first sighting of the 'thing' and horrified reaction. Both geese were now trying to get in the same nest box to the left of the new barrier, and no-one was going to get back onto the gosling. The Gander leaned over him and hissed, and everyone was getting a bit fired up again. I quietly removed the table/barrier in case it was that causing the problem, but then both geese and the gander took to looking at the nest in horror, hissing and occasionally seeming to take a tentative peck at the gosling.

This was not looking good. I backed off in case they might settle, but ten minutes later the gosling was in the middle of the floor, 4 feet from the nest having presumably been flung there by the gander. He looked a bit red, bruised and pecked about one flank. I needed to intervene in case he got killed. I rescued him/her and sought help from Carolyn who was closest. She advised I bring him quickly to her place where there are ducklings under an Infra Red heat lamp and an incubator also with duck eggs. The little Fiat turned ambulance as we raced down the lane. Suffice to say little gosling is now safe and warm in the incubator and Carolyn reports that an hour or so later he is lifting his head, which is a good sign.

We must now keep a careful eye on developments and we need to decide whether this the result of under-developed maternal instincts in the geese, none of whom are a year old yet. If so we should grab up any more eggs that hatch or potentially all the eggs and certainly be on station to rescue any more goslings who get ejected from the nest. They can be kept warm in the airing cupboard or a brooder-box or, in emergency I can do more ambulance runs.

On a happier note I FINISHED DIGGING THE POND today. At 6 m wide and 10 m long it has been a real labour of love which I have tackled at an hour a day and it has taken several months. It is finally there and ready for its butyl rubber liner and some water. It is a relief to get this far. We have done ponds before several times, but never a monster this big.

The horses got a nice treat today, being given the long lush grass between the orchard and the 'Secret Garden' today. We tethered each to a fence post so that they could just about reach each other if they needed to but they could also graze the whole width of this grass strip. They pile into the grass, especially, we have noticed, Bob (the pale Mini-Shetland furthest from the camera in this shot) and fill their bellies up tight, then all take a lie down. Carolyn had warned us about this which is lucky because as Liz says, having read very little about horses and knowing even less, lying down means colic and trauma and get the vet QUICK. These guys are very happy to be led back to 'their field' at the end of the day, where they go for a play-fight run about, racing round the field in great galloping arcs. They are little charmers.

Another gang getting more space today were the 8 baby chicks and Broody Betty. These guys are nearly 5 weeks old now so will soon be fully free range but we opted for an intermediate stage and gave them a weld-mesh corral while they got used to being allowed out of the  rabbit run which has been home for their first few weeks. As I look now the picture has resized itself into landscape. If this is still the case as you look, I apologise. I will try to sort it out.

I also promised you a better picture of the Gander enjoying his enamel bath which he can now access via the pallet ramp and he loves it. I have given him an old car floor mat as a non-slip pad to help him get out - we had seen him struggling on the skiddy wet enamel. Now he confidently hops in and out and stays for a long time in there preening, splashing and probably keeping a supervisory eye on progress on the big pond. I am sure he will want to be our first customer and if he could just hold off killing any goslings till we get it filled, he can even lead them out onto the water in a picturesque convoy. We wonder will that happen?

2 Hares, 1 Red Squirrel, No Goslings

I was treated to a lovely sight yesterday morning as I went out first thing to do my feed rounds - 2 hares strolling up the East Field back lit by the morning sun. I hasten to add that this picture is not one of mine - I am never organised enough at that time in the morning to have shipped the camera and telephoto - this is a shot blagged off the internet, as are the next two. We have our own subspecies of hare 'over here', the Irish or Blue Hare and we've seen these several times since we moved. Usually they are racing from A to B and you catch only a fleeting glimpse but yesterday these two ambled up the field and when they say me emerge from the back door, paused and gazed at me. I looked at them and them at me for some seconds, maybe half a minute before their nerve seemed to fail them and they turned and hurried off back down the field.

I thought I'd done well but I was completely trumped later in the morning by Liz's sighting of a red squirrel chasing across the road down by Shannon's Cross, just north of our local village, Loughglynn. No mistaking it, she says, although she couldn't believe her eyes at first and was mentally ticking off possible more likely creatures.... stoat or weasel? Nope, big bushy tail. Grey squirrel? Nope - this one glowed in its gingery orangeness!

In theory we KNOW we are in red squirrel country with the greys fading out at roughly the mid-line up Ireland and a band of 'only reds' territory running up through the western side of the island a bit inland from the coast. In practise neither of us had actually seen one (and I still have not, ever, unless you count captive bred animals)

Naturally we were keen to report both of these sightings for the record on the National Biodiversity Data Centre website at http://www.biodiversityireland.ie/  Looking at the right hand map here 'since 2010' distribution those poor squirrels look a bit thin on the ground, but it's probably just lack of recent recording rather than such a catastrophic decline.

Meanwhile, back here, we are on Day 30 of Goose Incubation. I thought we were on this morning. You know how you come to 'know' your animals and can spot even the subtlest change in behaviour? Well, this morning when I went to unlock the geese, only Gander came out and he seemed to be much calmer than normal, not shouting out his excitement at his release. Both geese sat tight on their nests and when we looked through the crack (the door is old and rotting and the hinge is not very well attached, so you can see a chink of goosiness by looking from the kitchen with binoculars) there seemed to be a lot of fidgeting going on. I added 2 and 2 and made 5, of course so I was getting quite excited but later on the girls both came off and went for a stroll, graze and poo with Gander which gave me a chance for a proper look (and also suggested to me that there would NOT be a hatch - I can't imagine the new Mums would be off strolling and abandoning new babies!) Nothing yet I'm afraid, but we are only on Day 30 of the 28-35 day predicted date range. Patience is the thing.

The picture, which is cropped from a very quickly snatched mobile phone shot shows Gander finally sussing out that the pallet leading up to the enamel bath is actually a ramp for his benefit. He finally worked this out yesterday and dropped down into the bath for the first time. This is him splashing about. I will get a better picture soon.

56

Today I am 56, my 2nd birthday in Ireland and my first in the "new" house. We made a bit of a weekend of it with special meals both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday we invited Mentor(s) Anne and Simon over and Liz cooked up a rather superb supper. Being all chicken keepers this has to be fitted in around 'bed time' for the birds, and with the evenings being now bright till around 7 pm, that means rounding up your birds by about 7.30 pm and socialising after that. The new hearth tiles are now fixed in place with their glue dried, so we were able to light a gentle fire in the main fireplace - it looked very good with the shiny hearth tiles reflecting the light from the flames. Our starter was a pomegranate and goats cheese salad. Main course was an 'Elizabethan Rabbit' recipe from the "Two Fat Ladies" cookbooks served with our own home made naan bread (Madhur Jaffrey recipe). The rabbit was actually one of the progeny of Anne's late buck Peter and our own doe Padfoot (late as in 'since sadly taken by a fox') which was rather nice. Pud was a chocolate mousse. We seemed to crack through a bit of Rioja and French red between us and the chat ebbed and flowed, taking in a fair amount of the recently deceased Maggie Thatcher and the Savita Halappanavar Galway Hospital case, till way gone midnight. Effortless and very enjoyable entertaining in lovely company. Thank you very much for coming, Anne and Simon.

Today we are just 'en famille' with no visitors and Liz is back in action creating a delicious potato-cake breakfast in which I get to eat the 2nd of our latest 2 goose eggs, with lunch as home made soup, coffee breaks featuring lemon drizzle cake and Dorset apple cake and a steak supper. Spoiled I am. I get a rake of birthday greetings through social network site 'Facebook', some cards, a superb (if not that tuneful) rendition of 'Happy Birthday to You' over the phone first thing from the assembled Silverwood Choir (cough), a more tuneful rendition later from Diamond and a lovely phone call from Pud Lady. I am taking a day off the pond-digging mainly because it has finally rained so my gardening is restricted to sowing seeds in pots, trays and tubs in the poly tunnel. The rain seems to have changed the appearance of the grass overnight and local farmers breathe sighs of relief that they might get some grazing for their cattle after all. Careful what you wish for, guys! I have clipped all three dogs, instead and very neat and summer-cool they look.

Meanwhile, in an exciting development in the poultry department, we have a goose (or geese) in lay. The photograph might look like a pile of hay but, trust me, it is in fact a hay box containing the start of a clutch of eggs. Let me explain. We were getting a bit concerned that the geese did not seem to be laying any eggs, although to be fair it was frosty most mornings and that awful NE wind had been whipping through for almost 3 weeks. We had even seen the gander 'treading' at least one of his ladies. Seeking advice from the  poultry discussion forum on the internet I was advised that if the geese were getting 'seen to' by the gander then they were almost certainly either laying or would soon start. Search through the hay in the hay-box and delve into the wood shavings, they said. Geese are pretty good at hiding eggs.

Goose eggs (Simon told us) stay viable for quite a long time while the goose accumulates her clutch at a rate of an egg a day or every 2nd or third day, trying to amass 12-14 eggs before she will go broody and sit on the clutch. So the next morning I headed for the goose house to let them out and to rummage and delve, but was presented with an egg in full view in a lovely cup-shaped, goose sized depression in the hay in the box. There proved to be a 2nd egg under the hay, so we collected both for use in the kitchen but then resolved to see if we could manage a clutch. All this had happened over night, quietly and with no drama from the geese.

The next day (now yesterday) that all changed and we seemed to move into a new format and level of excitement. We noticed during the morning that the geese were all hanging around the goose house door and waddling in and out of the house with much honking and noise every time the three got separated (by one being inside or outside and not visible to the others). It seemed this was the first time they had ever done anything other than as a threesome - they are normally glued together as a group, find one and you found them all. This separation was obviously stressful stuff! Eventually they sorted themselves out and Goocie sat on the box of hay while Gander and Goosey took them off a small distance to graze while Gander continued to honk and shout every few minutes, as if to reassure the sitting goose that he was still around. I went off to dig pond and after a half hour or so, Goocie emerged from the house and waddled over to find the other two.

Liz and I waited till they were safely out of sight and sneaked a peek into the house. At first we thought there was no egg but, no, there was indeed and egg but so carefully hidden under hay pulled across the top that it was invisible from above. I noticed in the evening when I went to round up the geese that Goocie went into the house and straight over to the hay box where she poked about checking that the egg was still there. We hope this means that she is now in 'accumulating a clutch' mode, so we have left that egg intact and will wait and see. There were no more eggs over night or today. Anne and Simon tells us that we may need to try to separate the 2 females if they both start nesting as they can hassle each other and start interfering with each others' nests, stealing or breaking eggs etc. This might have practical problems in our set-up; we'd struggle to fence the two halves of the family apart but still give them access to all their other needs and the gander, so we are just keeping a watchful eye. We will cross those bridges when (and if) we come to them.

Happy Birthday to me. I am told it is also the anniversary of the Titanic hitting the iceberg; that happened not long before midnight on the 14th and Titanic sank on the 15th. So now you know.

An Update on the Update

Sixteen days now without rain so we are now officially in drought. Please send any Aid Convoys and water bowsers soonest. Seriously though, we are enjoying the current dry spell and spending most of our time outdoors working together. I am cracking on with the pond and we are also moving a temporary compost 'site' to a more convenient position. This set of heaps were established in a hurry while we were still buildering and slung together using a rather ugly collection of corrugated iron and of wooden off-cuts banged into the ground as uprights.

There was an old broken down fence which used to run across from the cattle race to the gate into the 5 acre field (part of the land we didn't buy). Only the bit near what is now the orchard gate was still standing; the rest was lying flat or part-buried under mud and weeds, it's barbed wire looping out of the ground Loch Ness Monster style as a superb trip hazard. We had pulled much of this out but we used the standing section as the backs of two back back-to-back heaps, one for good stuff, one for rough. This set up now part blocks the entrance to the orchard field and is unsightly, so the sheet metal is going to go, the compost get moved to new heaps 'behind' the wall of the cattle race, the messy barbed wire extracted for scrapping and the posts pulled out and logged up for burning. We will then have another bit of nice flat bare spoil for gardening on.

The 'inherited' chain saw proved to be a very good one and in excellent, nearly new condition. Our man Felix-the-Fix (Chainsaw genius) serviced it and set it up for the outrageous sum of €6 (£5.18 to you Brits - I know... where does all the money go?) and even showed me how to start it etc. It turns out that Stihl equipment is date stamped, so we know that this saw was made in 1998 although, obviously, not when it was purchased. It might therefore have been bought by TK Min while he still lived on this site and it might be him that used it for the very few times it has been run. Felix could tell this was 'few' because of the very small amount of dust and rubbish under the chain guard and the lack of scuffing and wear on the chain 'bar' (big flat 'blade' sticking out of the front, around the edge of which the chain runs). Anyway, Felix declared it as safe as a new one. He also accepted the offer of my old one for salvage and bits. Oil pumps and air filters are apparently the thing.

We were just done pond-digging and compost heaving and we were sitting down on the outside chairs for a coffee, when two livestock things happened in quick succession. First some bizarre noises from the goose 'pond' drew our attention to the fact that Gander was doing naughty things to one of the gals (which, we are told, only happens on water). The other goose was hopping from foot to foot and flapping and honking. We do not know whether she wanted a turn, or was worried he was trying to drown the lady. This is the first time, to our knowledge that this has happened (though we are not there all the time to watch) but may portend the girls coming back into lay. That would be nice. We are also wondering whether we might get broodiness and goslings.

No sooner had we got over that excitement than Blue appeared with something big in his jaws which we at first thought was a bird with its wings spread. It was, in fact, a decent sized young rat, so it's good to know the cats are still on the case. Not to be outdone, Rolo was later also walking around with a dead mouse and even visited Liz while she was sitting on the 'throne', but his was stiff and cold so we think he just un-stashed it from some hidey hole to prove a point.

Sorry no pics today. More soon.

Charm Offensive?

The books we read on the subject all have geese as being delightful pets who form lovely and fascinating relationships with their humans and bring joy and happiness to your small holder life. Our three sheep became great friends who would eat out of our hands within days of being here and follow us around, come when called and each had a different personality (OK, I'll grant you the word 'pet' may not strictly apply, given the outcome for them, but I'm not going there today).

So, it has caused me a small amount of distress, that the three geese we bought, Goosey, Goocie and Gander seem to be playing hard to get. They were quite nervous of us when they first arrived and waddled off in the other direction as soon as they saw us, spending most of their time at the 'far end' of the orchard. We then upset them some more by Simon and I grabbing them one evening, one after the other to trim their wings amongst much annoyed and frightened honking and scurrying about in the shed. They were looking at me even more 'old-fashioned' the next morning; they definitely did NOT want to know us!

There was nothing for it if we wanted to form any kind of bond, but to start a gentle, patient charm offensive. This we have been trying since late January. We are very quiet around them, with no sudden movements. I have been creeping slowly up to them with a hand full of grain doing a two-tone whistle which they should come to know as a 'food' signal, throwing the food down near (but not 'at') them where they can clearly see it and then retreating a distance to watch. I have also been feeding them when ever they do something good, like obediently go back into their calf house for the night.

They are slowly, slowly coming round. After 3 weeks they will now race towards me as I appear and whistle, though they never get closer than about 10 feet. They will, eventually be eating out of our hands, I am sure and even allow themselves to be handled (all be it, I know they get a bit less willing during the breeding season; we have been warned to go careful with the girls if Gander is being protective, and go very careful with the geese around eggs or goslings). I will update you with progress on this love-bombing as it happens.

No such problems with the pups of course, and here is a nice picture of them gathered round the range, maybe feeling a bit cool in their newly shorn, short coats.

You can't make an Omelette...

I had a nice surprise this morning when waking up the live-stock, our first goose egg. Thank You very much Goosey or Goocie. The girls have a lovely hay box in their calf house in which I optimistically (and rather naively) thought they might make a nice nest and lay their eggs all clean and attractive looking. No such luck. Geese are, by their very nature, mucky beasts who have no respect for nice housing or bedding and tend to mess everything up by splashing their water about and poo-ing in their beds. I suppose it comes from normally 'roosting' in nature, out on the open water or in some muddy winter field where it didn't matter. So this lovely egg was dropped carelessly onto the wet poo-ey concrete of the calf house floor and needed a bit of a spruce up before I took its picture.

It weighs, we were interested to find, 110 g which is not quite twice what our chicken eggs weigh (around 64 g) so it's a bit big for the toast soldiers but would be great in omelette, or the Spanish Tortillas which we love and eat frequently here, and they are supposed to be excellent in cooking and baking. We also hear from Mentor Anne that there is a guy in town happy to sell any surplus we might produce through his little green-grocers.

Anyway, nice one girls (and the boy, I should add, who is marshalling and protecting them). We may reward them with a look at the orchard today; lots of lovely green Roscommon grass to eat and space to range in.

Goosey, Goocie Gander

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs

Yes, Dear Reader, we are in the goose business with our first three generic farmyard geese, 2 geese and a gander. We'd been looking around in books and on the internet for some of a variety called 'Pilgrim' having read that they were gentle, quiet and in the 'light' category (as opposed to the huge, saggy-bellied, Toulouse or Embden "heavy" type). However Pilgrim proved to be (in Ireland anyway) a bit of a specialist pure-bred type which would be pricey (over €100 per bird) and might even need sourcing from Norfolk in the UK, so we gave up on that idea and decided to look for common-or-garden farmyard geese available locally through the on-line classifieds website "Done Deal.ie"

So this morning saw us driving down to Rahara, just south of Roscommon town (about 40 minutes drive) with a big cardboard box and the cat basket in the car, not at all sure what we were buying, not 100% certain we'd be happy with the geese we saw and definitely a bit dubious about whether they would fit in our boxes. I had already gone onto the poultry advice forum on line to ask what I should be looking for in the way of clues to bad health or dodgy birds, warning bells etc. It turns out that geese are basically healthy and not beset by anything like as many issues (parasites etc) as poultry, so if I was after hybrid farmyard geese, as long as they were bright of eye and standing well on both legs, I'd be safe enough.

Well, they looked OK to us, so we paid our money and loaded them up, along with a bucket of the feed they'd been used to. They looked a bit muddy, but one thing we do know about geese is that they love to have water to wash themselves in and it didn't look as if they had had any down in Rahara, just mud and straw. The guy (quite a big sheep farmer by the looks) warned us to clip their wings as they'd be in a new place and might try to fly off in fright. We would therefore need to keep them indoors till we wing-clipped them.

We have set them up in the calf house with a crate of hay if they'd like to nestle down, a bucket of water and a bowl of the feed, and left them quiet to get over their journey. When we checked back on them we could see them reveling in the bucket of water, dipping their heads and letting the water run across their backs, shaking it about and making a lovely wet mess. We decided they might like a bit more water, so we have filled a crate to the brim and set up a 'stairs' of ash logs to climb up to get it. Tomorrow I will build them a run and let them have a bit of yard to look at (and their water-bath outside)

Mentor Anne and Simon called by and showed us how to wing-clip them. They were not happy about being handled, but this doesn't hurt them, you just clip across the 'upper-arm' and 'fore-arm' main feathers (leaving the long feathers on the 'hand' because that helps them defend themselves in case of a fox or dog attack). This tells them that they cannot fly because they can feel out of balance as soon as they flap their wings. Now we can make them an outdoor run without risk of them taking off, which they can easily do while young and light. We are told that once they know the place and are used to us this becomes less of a problem and , anyway, a fat, fully grown geese is nothing like as aerially minded as a rangey youngster.

We have called them Goosey, Goocie and Gander because it would be silly to give both the girls the same name, wouldn't it? :-) . Goocie has some black feather in her wings. Our plan is to keep these three as our 'parent generation' and only eat their eggs or any progeny. These should not end up in the freezer; those who were concerned about our lambs and rabbits will be relieved to know.