Fowl

We actually have had two types of fowl living at the pond this winter.  We have our brood of chickens and a visiting gaggle of geese that hang around on our pond. 

As previously reported in this blog, the chickens have been surviving this cold winter with the help of a heat light and plenty of cracked corn.  Egg production is finally up and Suzanne and Heath have been taking my excess eggs back to St. Louis with them every weekend.  Heath specifically asked for some to give to a co-worker.  She wanted to show her children all the different colored eggs available.  We also included some pullet eggs or very small eggs.  Those are the eggs from chickens who are less than a year old and are just getting the hang of laying eggs.  Too bad we did not know of this families interest in unusual eggs sooner.  We had quite a strange one a few weeks ago. 

Mike found a shell less egg in the chicken nest.  It looked like a normal size egg but felt like a water balloon.  We saved it so Suzanne and Heath could see it and they decided we should see if it was edible.  So Heath boiled the egg, sliced it in thirds and Suzanne, Heath and myself ate it.  Mike abstained as he thought someone she be available to drive the rest of us to the hospital if need be.  The egg looked like a normal boiled egg and tasted perfectly fine.  According to the Internet, soft shell eggs happen occasionally although they can be attributed to young layers which we do have. 

The best thing about the geese, our waterfowl, is that they give me or my family members a great excuse to use my new camera.  Our geese do not like people or dogs to get too close so the camera with the zoom lens enables me to get some close up pictures without causing the geese to move farther away.  

We have counted as many as forty geese although lately I have seen only two.  

The other nice thing about the geese is that they entertain the dogs particularly Finn.  Frankie and Finn like to bark at the geese.  This does not bother the geese at all although I can find it irritating.  I actually think it amuses the geese as they just continue to go about their business apparently blind and deaf to any dogs in the vicinity. 

I'm not sure the geese are permanent fixtures at the pond as the chickens are but we have seen them for about three winters in a row now.  Who knew that having all these birds around could be so amusing and on occasion even educational.