Saturday 8th April 2017
Welcome to our West of England trio
Amidst all the excitements of new lambs and keenly awaited calves, we seem to have acquired a trio of geese!!! Well, actually, it was all planned – it just came into being very quickly!!
You may remember that the goats grazed the poultry paddock during the lockdown as the grass was pretty long in there. Now the poultry are free-ranging again, having the goats or indeed anything else grazing in the paddock is a definite no-no on account of the availability of the layers pellets which the goats would adore, but their stomachs would not!! PLUS, we have planted a load of willow which would similarly find their way into the goats' mouths!!
That left us with the tricky problem of a poultry paddock full of grass which a mere 40 chickens, ducks and turkeys could not possibly keep on top of, grass NOT being the main diet of any of them. And so our thoughts turned to geese. We were (are) not particularly interested in eating either the eggs or the meat and as such did not want to consider large breeds or prolific layers. Instead, we did a bit of research into rare breeds, as we liked the idea of supporting a rare breed plus we thought that if we were able to sell the eggs and/or goslings, this might mean the geese would 'earn their keep'.
This led us, via a helpful friend, to a smallholding just off the edge of Dartmoor where this rather delightful trio of West of England geese were for sale. They are last year's hatch and had just started to lay (a process we have interrupted by moving them, but which will hopefully be restored soon). The male is pure white, the females white and grey!
The West of England goose breed was only standardised in 1999 but the breed has been around for ages and was once very common. It is an auto-sexing breed which means you can tell the sex of the goslings the day they hatch (the females have grey patches on their beaks). They only lay 30-40 eggs each spring which is similar to most geese (although the other auto-sexing goose, the Pilgrim goose, can lay up to 60).
We have yet to name them... we definitely need a regal theme!!!
You may remember that the goats grazed the poultry paddock during the lockdown as the grass was pretty long in there. Now the poultry are free-ranging again, having the goats or indeed anything else grazing in the paddock is a definite no-no on account of the availability of the layers pellets which the goats would adore, but their stomachs would not!! PLUS, we have planted a load of willow which would similarly find their way into the goats' mouths!!
This led us, via a helpful friend, to a smallholding just off the edge of Dartmoor where this rather delightful trio of West of England geese were for sale. They are last year's hatch and had just started to lay (a process we have interrupted by moving them, but which will hopefully be restored soon). The male is pure white, the females white and grey!
The West of England goose breed was only standardised in 1999 but the breed has been around for ages and was once very common. It is an auto-sexing breed which means you can tell the sex of the goslings the day they hatch (the females have grey patches on their beaks). They only lay 30-40 eggs each spring which is similar to most geese (although the other auto-sexing goose, the Pilgrim goose, can lay up to 60).
We have yet to name them... we definitely need a regal theme!!!