Happy Piggies and a Queen Goat

Yes, I have finally posted a picture of myself. I'm not the one with the red hair! My little porkers are very friendly now. They have a habit of staying close by, unless there is food to be had. They like to come close and plop down in hopes of a belly rub. We generally offer one up. This piggy looks like she is smiling as she gets her belly rubbed. That's Tammy and she is a bit bigger then her sister. Yes, I do still plan to have them butchered in the fall. This is all part of our philosophy to ensure they have the best lives we can give them, while they are still with us.



That's my son Gaelen. The goat playing 'Queen of the Castle' is Toffee. We have seen a nice change in her since she first came to us. She is really enjoying her environment and it shows in how playful she is now. She loves to bound around, actually looks like a bunny, and she has taken to sleeping on top of one of the shelters. She is the oldest of the group at 3 years old, almost middle age for a goat.



The above picture shows some of the differences in our birds. The smallest is the youngest group of our Bourbon Red turkeys, the other turkey is from the older Bourbon Red group. The chicken is one of our Chantecler chickens that started as a chick. They still have some growing to do. On that note, I've done some more research and there is apparently controversy on the fact that true Chantecler chickens are only white and the other colours are actually crosses. They are recognized breeds but were apparently wrongly classified as varieties of the Chantecler. I'm going to look into it further and try to decide what to purchase for the spring. Please feel free to comment on it!



In other farm news, this is one of the chickens we had in the backyard chicken tractor. She seems to be a bit of a loner but caught on the fastest in that she has learned to stay with the group. Two of the other layers are hanging around more but one has gone missing. I'm guessing it's the one that was acting very broody when we still had them in the backyard. She had taken to staying in the house all day and our egg production went way down. I'm guessing she has found a spot to sit on some eggs. Too bad they won't be fertile. She hasn't had any contact with a mature enough rooster for them to be.



On that note, one of our chantecler chicks looks like he might be mature enough to get the job done. His 'skin' around his head is very red, something I've read indicates maturity, and he likes to strut around. The flash on my camera has washed out the colour but his comb is fire engine red. He's a good looking rooster and will likely join the mature flock of our friend who has lent us the land. I want to wait for him to be bigger though as the flock is much older.



Lastly I wanted to discuss our Pilgrim ganders. If you have read my previous post on Pilgrim geese, you would have discovered that Pilgrims are the only domestic geese that can be sexed at hatching based on colour. The females are grey and the males are all white. I generally don't agree with breeding just for colour, but in this case I think it has it's value. The breed standard sets out that a male must be all white. We have 4 Pilgrims and they are all male (ganders). Three are from the same parents. Our hope had been to keep the best of the three brothers and the unrelated one (Bob). It was obvious very early on that the largest gander (Moe) had the best personality and Bob was a close second. This seemed to work well for our plans. Unfortunately, as they have gotten older, it has become obvious that only Moe meets the breed standard. I personally think he is an excellent Pilgrim gander and have high hopes for his mating, if we have somewhere for him over the winter. We hope to get him a mate but he may need to wait until next year. Hopefully you can see the difference in the above picture.