Tuesday, November 2, 2010

What's New at Our Farm!

Well! Much to write about -- lots of new things to share!

Recently Steven bought his first pair of turkeys and geese. The beautiful Bourbon Red turkeys will be his breeding pair to hopefully rear some baby turkeys next spring! I have to admit, these birds are really gorgeous! However, it was hard to get a decent photograph of them together. Mr. Tom sure likes to strut around and show off.




The pair of geese (which we HOPE are a male and female, we aren't sure) seem to be mild-mannered, and not noisy and annoying as I feared they would be. They are also beautiful birds.




I was surprised to find that even as large and heavy as they are, they still can do a low fly quite a distance! (much like pheasant do) They wandered out to the goat corral one day, and I closed the gate, thinking they would graze there for awhile, but they didn't like being locked away from the house, and flew quite easily across the corral and into the backyard.

Steven's plan is to put the geese, and perhaps the turkeys, out in the orchard next spring, to help keep the grass and insects there under control. The geese won't hurt the young trees, as goats or other grazers would.

Neither pair of birds seem really used to free range yet. Perhaps they had always been kept locked up. For the first couple of days, all they did was follow us around as we worked outside. We do pen them up at night, for their own safety.

Did I mention that a couple weeks ago Steven also finally got a new buck for his goat herd? Hopefully this will mean a nice crop of spring kids.

3 comments:

Queenacres said...

Congrats on all the new additions Tracy! The turkeys are beautiful, he got some really nice ones! Nice buck too..hope you guys have a great kidding season!

Kelle at The Never Done Farm said...

Your newest additions are beautiful( handsome for the fellas) We too have a Burbon Red Tom, still searching for a hen though. We also have Narragansets and Bronze. The geese are beautiful but I know nothing about them, other than the African breed can get mean( friends have some and their Gander hates me, LOL!)

Sounds as if Steven is on his way in getting a good homestead set up.

BTW, MIke had his interview today*sigh* but won't know anything until at the earliest Friday or not until Monday. Poor Mike is so down( he's truly worked so hard in this job, taking pride in everything he does, as always), he doesn't have a very good feeling, said they even sort of bragged they had 9 others to interview for the position.Although they did tell him they were VERY Pleased with his job performance( kinda sounded like double talk to Mike) We'll be discussing our options more tonight*sigh* PTL we're debt free and have plenty of food, wood and feed for the animals in storage. I'll let you know more and then we'll talk about the other :o)
Blessings,
Kelle

Anonymous said...

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