Same goose, different year lol.  My grey goose is laying again.   Earlier this month I tried incubating a few of her eggs without success.  I don't know if the eggs were infertile or if they froze, but not a one developed.  Mama Goose always lays overnight, and spring time temperatures in the Rocky Mountains at 9000' are brisk to put it mildly!

​The first of the eggs was layed about 2 weeks ago.  Mama goose was laying an egg about every 2nd or 3rd day and not actively sitting but was showing signs that she would nest. I gathered the eggs until I had a clutch of 4 eggs for her to sit on.  The tentative nest she was building was situated right at the entrance of the pen where if I opened the gate it would hit the nest and could very well break the eggs.  So I hollowed out an area in the stall, and lined it with straw, layed the 4 eggs in it and hoped Mama goose would approve.  Later on that evening spying on the geese via my barn cam I was thrilled to see Mama Goose sitting on my makeshift nest!

She has been sitting faithfully and has vastly improved the nest, lining it with her own down.  She has also layed two more eggs and is now sitting on a clutch of 6 eggs.

This morning mama goose got off her nest while I was feeding and gave me an opportunity to photograph the eggs in the nest.  Here they are 6 eggs with Mama goose primping the nest.

I do hope they are fertile and that in 3 weeks we'll have little goslings!  

No it's not what you are thinking-I didn't step in a pile of squishy poo!

It was whilst going about my morning routine-puting hay outside, then letting the goats out, then letting the sheep out and then finally letting the geese out.  I opened the gate to the geese pen, stepped in to flush them out and felt it-a crack beneath my foot. I instantly knew what it was and my stomach dropped into my foot-my sebbies (sebastopol geese) had laid their first egg! And I had crushed it.  

I knew it was breeding time in the geese yard by the cacophony of sound that greets my ears every day, but I had not seen any nesting going on and didn't really expect any-these geese are less than a year old. I do hope I can persuade them to move their nest beyond the gate entrance. I laid straw all around the perimeter of their pen this morning except by the gate in hopes that I can lure them to a better nesting spot.

I do hope Momma Goose can forgive me for literally crushing her first born.

I'm hoping more eggs will follow. I wish I'd scooped up the egg remnants to see if it looked fertile, rather than letting my dog gobble it up.  It is said often the first couple of eggs of the season are not fertile so hoping that was the case with this one.  One can expect a Sebastopol geese to lay as many eggs as they feel comfortable they can sit on.  If you remove eggs from the nest (to incubate inside) they'll continue to lay until they have about 8-12 in their nest. In total they can lay from 25-35 eggs a year, though with this young couple I don't expect that many. It is wise to leave one egg in the nest to keep the goose interested in laying (Oops that's one strike against me already!)


Here's hoping that I have more eggs in the next few days.  I may also need to dust off my incubator!

It is lambing time once again! I found twin lambs this morning.  Not a textbook setting...one lamb had crawled through the wire panel and was hiding under my milk stand-I only found it due to it's loud cries of distress! The other was mingling with the flock with mama paying no attention to it at all.

I had my daughter Katie take hold of the lambs as I let the flock out of the barn-and out went Mama oblivious to her lambs.  I had to drag her back into the barn.  It appears that her milk hasn't dropped as I was unable to get anything out of her teats and she is usually a heavy milker.  I gave her some Oxytocin and mixed a bottle of colostrum replacer for the babies who sucked it down well.  Hopefully over the next few hours she will bond better with the lambs and her milk will come down. She's usually a very attentive mother.

Our first mini-nubian birth took place yesterday.  Patrona laid down and had her kid right in front of our guesthouse as 10:00 am in the morning!  All went well and we have a bouncing baby boy called Lupin. 

I have read about several methods on sexing chicks without using the vent method, feather sexing and combs are two methods.  I'm going to try to use these methods on the two chicks I hatched this week.

Let's first look at combs. I've read that on a young cockerel the comb will extend right down between the nostrils, with a pullet it'll end somewhere above the nostrils.

Now we'll move on to the feathers: There are two feather sexing tips I have read. I found this diagram on pinterest:

The above diagram is pretty self explanatory. I've also read that if you look at the wing tips with the winds closed the little roos will have fuzzy furry wing tips, and the pullets will have more feathery wingtips.

So here are my two chicks hatched 3 days ago on June 29. The pictures on the left are the yellow chick, the pictures on the right the yellow/black chick. So what do you think?

Here is what I'm going with-they both have similar combs and wing feathering, though the black and yellow chicks feathers seem much more random than the yellow chicks. My verdict both pullets-somehow I'm guessing I'm going to be wrong lol.  I'll post updates in a few weeks when I know for sure!

The forecast is up to 12" of snow this weekend but that doesn't mean we shouldn't start thinking of Spring and gardening.  If my family wants to reap a harvest this summer I'd better start sowing.

To that end this morning I started some tomato seeds. I'm trying something new-I'm using egg shells as pots. I often have troubles repotting seedlings without damaging them and the idea here is the seedlings can be replanted in their little egg shell pots. I'll crush the bottoms when I repot and leave the rest around the seedling. As the egg shell decomposes the tomato seedlings will get a calcium boost too!

I also happened to have a plastic egg carton to hold the egg pots in that can double as a mini greenhouse.

And since seed starting requires heat and we don't keep our house at the required 80+ temperatures ideal for seed germination, I'm using my homemade incubator as a heating mat. I've done this before and it works great. I set a towel over it so the seedlings don't get confused and grow towards the light.  Meanwhile I can also put my incubator through a testing period before I set eggs to hatch.

I discussed the breeding with some breeder friends and hummed and hawed. If Selena was pregnant should I abort or should I let her have the pups. Abortion would have it's own complication-she could contract pyrometritis which could be fatal. Loving my dogs as I do taking any risk wasn't worth it to me. So after a few weeks I had her checked and sure enough she was pregnant. Wonderful.

Puppy day came and I braced myself. I still hadn't reached a solid conclusion on what to do if she had homozygous merle puppies -I certainly didn't want to bring into this world pups with disabilities. It's recommended to put these pups down at birth -but I knew I couldn't personally do it. I held my breath as Selena went into labor. Her first pup was a black-tri male, just a little guy. Then came a beautiful blue merle girl...so far so good...she then slowed down and seemed to struggle with the next one. When I saw her it was no wonder -a huge red merle girl....phew so far so good. It seemed that perhaps she was done and I began to relax. It then became apparent that there was perhaps one more. I prayed that this wouldn't be the homozygous merle....up and down she went, pacing around the room, stopping to lick her puppies...and then she had Annie, the black-tri girl my daughter had been hoping for (she'd already decided that's the one she was keeping and even talked to her before she was born through Selena's tummy). Annie lay there, very still. To my horror I realized she was hardly breathing. Often puppies get fluid in their respiratory systems before birth-and it must be removed or else they will suffocate. Casey, my friend quickly grabbed her, cradled her in her palm, and swung her up and down. The pup came to life, sucking in air to her little lungs. Selena settled down to licking and cleaning her puppies (and herself)...labor was done and I had four healthy, stunning puppies.

Normally when breeders have puppies they'll evaluate them for desired traits and pick the puppy that expresses the most desired qualities. I was not afforded such opportunity. My 5 year old daughter had picked her puppy before she was born, the black-tri girl, Annie was not going anywhere.

Annie proved to be an odd character. She's extremely affectionate - a true cuddle bug, always touching me, yet so easily distracted. It's so hard to get her to focus on the job at hand. I had to quit my first agility lessons as she kept trying to fence run with a neighbors dog. At home in the morning she took to jumping our chain-look fence to go bark and fuss at the horses. I enrolled her in obedience lessons to get a handle on my wild child, and it helped but still she LOOKS for distractions.

Annie will be 6 this year and I have gained a degree of control evidenced by several agility titles, her CD certificate and a rally title but I also have concluded that Annie needs a job.
A little over a year ago I took her to a "Meet the Sheep" seminar. She got to track a flock of sheep. I saw my dog change before my eyes...I had never seen such desire in her before. You see, despite her unruly fence jumping behavior Annie is not a very motivated dog. I've spent hours trying to teach her to play, to interact with me and not just be a couch potato. Just seeing the sheep brought Annie to life. When her turn was done, she had to practically be dragged out, and then she turned to face the next dog to work and barked at it as if saying "hey quit, those are my sheep". I had found something Annie really wanted to do.

It was almost 8 months before I could get some stock lessons arranged. Annie proved to be just as enthusiastic but I realized very quickly -she's over the top -too enthusiastic. At $35.00 a lesson how long would it take to get her just to relax? I decided we needed some sheep.

And herein begins the rest of the story...how are horse farm has quickly become home to various other lovely animals. Join us as each day we awake to some new wonder or adventure.