These were taken last Saturday when we tagged ewes…

Never mind me…

Hmmm….

Sooo cozy soft…

Yep, very nice!

Me too, me too!!

It was kinda funny to watch the geese walk all Dugur and I was amazed at how well he tolerated them. And FYI Dugur is only sleeping not dead papa!

~A little down~

Nov23

Downy~Our Toulouse Goose

These guys don’t seem to have much problem staying warm in their down coats despite the cold weather! :0)

At the watering hole...

Duck...Duck...Sheep?

The view today...

At the barn…

Nov4

*Kisses*

Honkers and Blaas on some winter wheat and clover no-tilled in...

Clover smiling!

Thora lookin a bit scary! Trick or Sheep?

Just ducky...

Two more…

Jun10

The kids found two more additions to Downy’s lttle family this morning…

Three little goslings...

Downy checking out a hatched egg…

An empty egg...

She has two more eggs left, so we’ll see if she have any more additions later.

Another baby here!

Jun9

Today the kids found that we had another baby. Earlier this Spring we started to find goose eggs in various places. Not being sure if they were fertile eggs we started to gather them.

Goose and chicken eggs...

Then we found this up by the barn when we were lambing…

Downy's nest...see the eggs that are buried?

So we returned the couple of eggs that we had collected and put them with the rest of the nest. Downy took to faithfully setting on her nest. Her mate sat by her side and sadly (mysteriously) died, but Downy continued to patiently sit alone…

Downy on her nest...

In between rain storms today the kids went up to work their fair lambs.

The weather here today...

This is what they found…

A gosling...

We were all about to give up on her hatching out anything as she had been spotted off her nest a couple of times this past week. Her patience seems to have paid off!

Sawyer’s Goose Egg…

Apr20

While Sawyer was up at the barn checking water troughs, he got a huge goose egg…

Honkin' Big...

We bought two Toulouse geese last spring…obviously one is a girl. Now we need to look on-line to see if the other is a male. It might be sort of neat to let them hatch out some gooslings.

As big as Tori's Ipod Nano...

The little boys think it should be breakfast and are fighting over who gets to eat it! Mmmm…maybe!

Durkeys…

Jul21

Turkey...

The turkeys have become big enough that they were set free from their captivity. They roam through the pastures, and garden and surprisingly enough not too often in the yard. It has been a tad on the warm side here lately so I thought it was sort of funny to see turkeys turn duck the other evening…

Durkeys...

Sitting on the sheep waterer...

reflecting...

We all thought it is was too funny to see the turkeys wading around in the stock tank like the ducks do in their pool. After they left I peeked in the tank and they ended up leaving lots of little durkey droppings in the water…not so funny. So after cleaning the tank and refilling it I was sort of worried about them returning and making another big mess but so far there hasn’t been any more durkey mess in the stock tank. Yeah!

Right now we have an abundance of grass hoppers and both the turkeys and ducks seem to be keen on eating them.

The Toulouse's out on pasture...

The geese have also proved to be good watch dogs, tending to the little ducks they grew up with. So far we have not lost a single duck to predators.

Toulouse goose guarding the Indian Runner ducks...

Last year it was a bad year for ducks around here. We ended up loosing 3/4the of our flock in two nights to the fox. The lone duck buddied up with the hens and eventually she turned up missing one day too.

Toulouse goose

The little kids do not like the geese anymore…at all! The geese are nearly big enough to look them straight in the eye with a glaring little look that scares them to death. Which makes the kids run and then the geese let loose and chase after them. They don’t seem to bother any of us bigger people yet. They even sorta bug me out when they start the stare down but it seems if you hold your ground and just keep going about your business they just leave you alone. Hehe! We’ll see…