On Wednesday we were keen to begin our day with our first round of morning chores. We'd been "trained" the day before and agreed with Bryce that we would take care of feeding the chickens, gathering the eggs and feeding the dog, Saxton, each morning. Since are now experience zoo keepers this was well within our areas of expertise (or at least experience!)
At about 8:30 we descended the stairs to the chicken pen to find Bryce already there! We were a little disappointed that he beat us to it (and that we had failed one of our first assignments). We said good morning and we quickly learned that Bryce did not feed the hens. He had only come to drop off a gosling that Myra, his wife, had found on the road on the way to work. It was a lost little soul that was wandering on the side of the road and Myra picked it up and returned home to leave it in Bryce's care.
One of the hens has been "brooding" lately so Bryce thought that since it's usually sitting on eggs she might sit on the little gosling as well. Seems Mrs. Hen was did not take to the squirmy little thing and flew the coup after a few minutes. The gosling spent the rest of the day in an incubator to keep warm. The new plan was to try to find a goose family to adopt him.
After work, Gayle and I took a walk along the shore. Within seconds we saw the perfect candidates. Goose, gander and 4 little goslings swam up the river and landed on the shore across. Mom in the front and dad watching from the back. We noticed that there was another pair of geese on the shore as well.
We quickly hopped into the kayak and paddled across to see if we could find a nest. By the time we reached the shore we could see the family of geese in the trees and they didn't seem to be moving. We decided that it was time to take action and encourage an adoption.
We hustled back to the farm to share our idea with Bryce. He was all in so we rushed to the shed and put the little orphan in a box, loaded him in the kayak and started paddling.
We reached the other side and there were no geese to be found! Dang! We searched up and down the shore and found nothing. We aborted the mission and put our little orphaned friend back into the incubator.
As the afternoon turned into evening we checked numerous times to see if the goose family reappeared. They did not.
After dark, when all the chickens were in the coup, Bryce tucked the fuzzy gosling underneath the brooder once again. After 20 minutes things looked good so Bryce went back to the house.
The next morning the gosling was gone. Seems that hanging out with 18 hens was not it's "thing". It would have been an easy escape for it to get to the river and if the little goose family that lives close by heard him chirping along the shore that might have just picked him up. We'll let you know if we see a family with 5 little ones.