First Goose Egg of 2009

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Let it be known that spring has officially begun! The younger African goose has laid her very first egg of the year. The gander has not yet turned defensive and bitey, but this is soon to come I am sure. They are becoming more attached to their pen, as is par for the course.

We found out the first year that we did not prefer the taste and texture of goose eggs over our chickens'. We ended up blowing them all out to use for future eggery crafts. At first, we would drill two holes, one in either end and then blow them out! Boy, was that a headache...literally. DH came up with the idea to use a syringe. We would drill one hole with the Dremel and inserted the needle of a syringe and then draw the white and yolk out. The yolk had to be scrambled first with a bamboo skewer. Much easier! and it was nice to have one hole in the shell only.

I mainly wanted to use the goose eggs for Pysanky, so I was still wondering how I was going to deal with keeping dye out of the hole. Usually Pysanky is done on raw eggs and eventually the egg will dry out after some years. Sometimes the egg will rot and explode! I did not want to take this risk, especially after doing what would be hours of work for me.

The final, happy solution was to set the whole eggs, pointed end up, in a flat box filled half way with silica sand. It has taken about a year and a half, but I now have some whole goose eggs that are completely dry. The dried yolk moves around in the shell like a marble, but the white seems to evaporate through the porous shell. Best of all-- no holes!

I am thinking of trying to bury the eggs in SILICA (used for drying flowers) this year to see if they dry out any faster.

Check out these Chicks!

I finished getting the space ready for the chicks in the chicken run this morning. I went back to town to the Rural King for the purpose of picking up 25 Rock Cornish Cross. At this point, I still was undecided about what I was going to do about layers. After having my car T-boned in the parking lot and dealing with all that (Arrgh!), inside I went to choose my chicks!

I did decide on some layers, too. I chose Ameraucanas and also Leghorns out of the several types that they had. This time, the right guy was there who could tell me what each of the breeds were. These were too old for me to try to guess at the gender. Someone once told me that an easy way to sex day old chicks was to look at the pin feathers on the wings. The pullets' pins will be more advanced than the roos. It was still kind of iffy, but four years ago when we last bought chicks, this method gave us almost 65% pullets. I think we would have done better, but I may have forgotten to check every one in the excitement of the moment! Those who know better will sex the chicks by squeezing out the poop and then they can squeeze a little more and see if there is a little 'nub' (roos) or not (not roos)! I tried to do this, but just couldn't handle this method. Oh well, maybe someday I will have someone show me how. I can only hope that out of the six Ameraucanas and the three Brown Leghorns, that I will get a few pullets out of it. They did have Sex Links, but I wanted something a little more interesting.

Here is the set-up that we put together for them. The shelter is an overturned sand spreader hopper that goes in the back of a pick up truck. This was a factory second that was given to us. I knew right away what I would use it for! So I have it setting up on cinder blocks. The bedding is loose straw with a layer of wood shavings over the top of that. I have the heat lamp hanging from above, plywood on top to cover the opening and I have covered the whole things with a couple of blankets for the night. Last, but not least, there are flakes of hay around the entire thing to keep it snug and warm. I will remove the flakes in front during the day so they can move freely in and out. It is supposed to get down to 34 degrees F tonight, but the rest of the week will not drop that low. I will go out and check on them later to see how they are doing.

The ICYouSee
Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart

Getting Ready for Chicks and Goslings

Yesterday I stopped by the Rural King for a new lawn rake... The weather has been wonderfully warm and breezy and I have accomplished mucho spring clean up this week...looks good, feels even better! Not too surprizingly, they had baby chicks in by the truckload. Six or seven galvanized water troughs were set up with heat lamps and ground corn cobs for bedding. The chicks were straight run, of course. This is the only way you can buy them here unless special ordered. Two whole troughs were Cornish Cross--one trough held chicks a little older than the others. The other troughs were divided up into various other unidentified breeds of straight run chicks. Some look like Rhode Island Reds, Cinnamons and Barred Plymouth Rocks, which we have had before...but still it would only be my best guess, not being so familiar with identifying breeds of chicks. The Rock Cornish Cross, I do know for sure.

I have spent today and yesterday cleaning up the chicken run and getting it ready for about thirty Rock Cornish Cross. These are for the freezer. At the same time, I need to be able to choose maybe half a dozen of a layer breed. I was thinking about ordering older pullets ready to lay, but maybe I will just get the chicks afterall. We are doing ok with the number of eggs that we are still getting from our two remaining three year old hens for now. I worry about whether older pullets would come back to the coop to roost since they would not have been raised here. I don't want hens that I have to keep locked up all the time. I was hoping to have Leghorns this time. I wish I knew someone to ask about bringing in older pullets to a free range situation.

I did place an order for fifteen Toulouse geese for the freezer. I hope our Africans will adopt and care for the new goslings. They were all very protective of the goslings that were hatched here two years ago by one of my geese. I hope they will do the same for the 'orphans' when they come. If they don't protect them, I will have to concern myself with keeping them safe from the barn kitties...after all, they look like just another bird to four kitties who are used to hunting!