August has been a bit of a hit and miss month on the weather front, with a bit more of the miss… and this weekend is set to be quite stormy and wet. We are escaping mildly though, in parts of the north there has been mass flooding and huge travel disruption.
On the smallholding, the only animals that retreat, without fail, to their shelter, are the goats, whilst the geese and rhea here, simply hunker down and battle it out. These two species live together in ideal harmony: the geese bow down to the rhea when it comes to feed, i.e. the rhea take prescience, which is fine as the geese don’t really need any pellets this time of year – the grass is enough for them. BUT they do enjoy their corn still and are prepared to brazen out the competition when it comes to grabbing a mouthful or two of their favourite treat...
Looking ahead to next year, something which as smallholders, we do pretty much all the time, we are wondering if they can share a field at breeding time – the geese could have a field shelter for nesting and the rhea the ground (as is their want). It needs some thought, with the biggest question being whether the rhea would fight off a fox who came in for the geese, or whether they would only be concerned for themselves…