Livestock – Page 2 – Homestead One Day

I have been wanting geese for years. I had fond memories of my little goose, Goosey, who fell victim to a bobcat before he even got all his (or her) feathers. I remembered Goosey as following me around the yard and interacting with me. The little goose attitude was cute too!

I also had some not as fond memories of a Toulouse goose named Mooch. Mooch also had attitude but not quite so cute. It was many battles of will, a few goose bites, and a bunch of squawking (from me) before we reached an agreement about who could be where…as in no, we can’t both occupy the same space. We figured it out though and all was forgiven. I developed eyes in the back of my head pretty quickly though!

Last year I tried to order some Buff geese in March, only to discover that everyone was already sold out. This year, I decided that I was not going to miss out and placed my order in December for summer delivery.

After a very very long wait…they came in! They were ready to get out of the box even when I peeked in at the post office to do a quick head count. They’re so cute! I’m looking forward to raising these guys (and girls). I ordered 2 males and 4 females hoping they are accurately sexed so I can have 2 trios.

Isn’t he adorable?

I took a few animals to a local farmer’s market to make some room this weekend. I joked last month how the vendors end up buying from each other as much as the public does…and I did it myself.

These are Cortunix quail, different colors. 2 days old in this picture, basically little cottonballs. Quail can be tricky to raise and unfortunately I’ve already lost a couple…but I’m looking forward to raising as many as I can out of this batch. Aren’t they cute???

The next picture has two combined groups…the ones with the wing feathers are my new Serama chicks. Tiny chickens, eggs a bit bigger than quail eggs, introduced to me by the booth next to me at the market last month. I also bought a couple adult pairs but that’ll be another post. These are actually several weeks old!

The red ones with barely any feathers are Leghorns from Tractor Supply (that’ll be yet another post lol) and are probably a week old. The reason the two groups are together is the Seramas were huddled together despite it being over 90 on the porch so I decided to see if they’d like a heat lamp. Yep, they did!

The quail were my final critter I wanted on the homestead. The Serama chickens I’m hoping with either help with feed bills through sales or will be single serving sized meals. The leghorns were not in any plans, so I’ll have to see how they grow. I may just raise them and sell, depending on the market and what gender they turn out to be.

But for now, I’ll just enjoy the cute baby stages of all of them 🙂

Category: Livestock

The cutest geese arrived! I’m infatuated already!

New adorable babies joining the homestead