Meet Mr. Brown and other news from the homestead

[wayfaringwordhack]

Today* we welcomed a new bird to the property (and three potential others, more about that below) :  A Khaki Campbell drake, the titular Mr. Brown.

 

Perhaps I am jumping the gun in getting a male because we have no females yet, only 4(ish) viable eggs in an incubator** that might or might not give us females. Because we continue to have health problems with our chickens, we are finally making the move to raise different laying birds, and due to the confinement (lockdown...or whatever you call it where you are), our efforts were thwarted earlier this spring.

Four eggs is not a lot, and they might not all hatch, so we went to the market to get more eggs. Only they were sold out, but another breeder had a 3-month-old male, so we decided to go ahead and get him to avoid any inbreeding in the future as we build our flock.

In lieu of duck eggs, we bought 3 goose eggs to put under a broody duck, in hopes that they might grow into good guard animals  to help us with our raptor problem (at least 7 raptor-related deaths). Geese apparently have superb early-warning skills, and their size can be dissausive. 

There may be more news fit to print, but with this pesky keyboard, this is all you are getting. :P
_______
*OK, not "today," rather the 25 May. We are having severe keyboard problems that make writing a royal pain. Yes, I have been trying to write this entry for a week. This is why I am not doing the June journalling challenge that I learned about through dray.

**borrowed incubator, which has convinced me of my thought that hatching under a mother bird is sooooooo much better than relying on technology.

 

Comments

[asakiyume]

I adore this photo of S. So beautiful to see her growing.

Good luck with the ducks and geese--I love the idea of early-warning geese and guard geese

[wayfaringwordhack]

Growing, she is! It is amazing how much--and how little--she has changed. :P

I hope we can tame/gentle the geese a bit; I don't want them turning on us, as they can do. :-/

[wayfaringwordhack]

sorry, the other message was for the below comment; deleted and correctly reposted :P.

[dray]

Ah, so cool! I'm sorry about all of the raptor problems... I hope the geese wind up being wonderful guards, though!

[wayfaringwordhack]

We will try to sneak them away from the momma duck as much as we can in order to make them more human-friendly, but we shall see. Good thing my kids--well, my daughter, actually--is a terrific fowl catcher. :P

[dray]

That's so cool--she's learning some excellent skills. Great pics, btw!

[queenoftheskies]

Congratulations on the new addition to your family!

(And, I hope your eggs give you females.)

[wayfaringwordhack]

So do I! Fingers crossed! If S and I are able to vent sex them we will know in about 8 days. :P Thanks, YouTube. ;)

[rimturse]

Well, I certainly have a lot of respect for geese, so hopefully the raptors will as well.

All the eggs the wild duck laid in my cousins heather bush were unfortunately taken. There's a marten living under their neighbour's roof, so it's not difficult to guess the culprit. :(

And what an appropriate name for Mr. Brown. It suits him!