I spoke to soon

Sunday 26th June 2011
So yesterday I said that the geese were now to big to get out of the field. WRONG.
When I went to check them this morning two of them were missing. I checked around thinking that they would not go far away from there mates and I found one of them running up and down on the other side of the fence in our bottom field. It was lame and must have hurt its leg getting out. Anyway this made it easier to catch.
I searched all over the place in the fields around us but no sign of it. The grass is long though and if they are frightened then they just lie down and keep still which makes them very difficult to find.
I put the three remaining geese into a pen and then thought that I had better phone Dennis and let him know that I had lost one. I did wonder if it was possible that the missing one had gone back home to Dennis's. If Dennis did find out that it had got lost and I had not told him then he would never forgive me.
When I phoned him, Dennis also thought that it would be somewhere close by and would return to be close to the others. He also thought that it was far to great a distance for it to go back home to his house.

Later in the evening I got a phone call from Dennis. The missing goose had turned up at his house. He fetched it back and I put it in the pen with the others. Dennis agreed that this was a good idea until they settled down with us. (I had suggested this last time they legged it but Dennis did not like the idea so he took them back.)
Anyway, hopefully they will settle in and I can let them out in a few days when they think of this as home.

Just because we haveenough poultry at the moment Pam got 6 cochin eggs which I put in the incubator and I am thinking of getting some more andalusian eggs.

On Monday I finally got the new drive belt for the mower and we seem to have spent half the rest of the week mowing lawns and topping the fields.

My andalusian eggs arrived on Friday. As we have not yet hatched any eggs out of the flash new incubator, I put half into our incubator and gave half to Dennis to put in his incubator for me. At least this may reduce the risk if anything goes wrong with one of the incubators.

We let the geese out of the pen that they have been in for a few days and they seem to have settled down so we went to Tesco and bought them a paddling pool as a special treat.

On a sadder note. I found Pam's good quality light sussex cockerel dead. It had all the feathers around its neck pulled and disarranged. I suspect that it was the three runner duck drakes. They frequently gang up on the hens and all three try and rape the hens. I assume that they have done this to the cockerel.

On Saturday I killed the three runner ducks.