A Birthday Treat!

My birthday is in February.  Now those who know me well know I hate the cold. The only thing about winter I enjoy is traveling to the Caribbean. Now that I’m farming full time, the winter is doubly awful as now I can’t bundle away in the comfort of a heated house. I have to actually be in the cold every day, even when it is some ridiculous degree below zero. 

The other drag about farming in the winter is there is nothing going on. The babies do not arrive till spring. The chickens are hardly laying any eggs. The animals all just sit around waiting for the snow to melt, eating and drinking a tremendous amount of food, thus producing a tremendous amount of waste. So basically it is all the yuck work without any of the fun!

So, as my birthday was drawing near, I was bored and depressed and wishing for something exciting that did not involve the freezing cold. The morning of my birthday, I received an unusual posting in my email from the Vermont Bird Fanciers Group. Someone was looking to sell day old Sebastopol Goslings.

Now Sebastopol geese are beautiful. They are pure white with long curly feathers. Known for their friendly dispositions, these geese are most commonly raised as show birds. You can eat them, but the babies sell for $50.00-$60.00 with mature birds selling for $75.00. At that price, most Sebastopols never find their way to a dinner table.

Bridget and I had talked about getting geese in the spring. Once when we went to a neighboring farm, I was greeted by the most enthusiastic squawking from a flock of Toulouse geese that chased me around the yard until the farmer came out and rescued me. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. I knew I would one day Iwould add geese to our flock. So much personality in a bird was too much to resist!

Now these Sebastopols were being offered for $30.00 a bird, an unheard of price. In hindsight, I’m guessing the price was based on the fact that most sane people would think to themselves “what can you do with baby geese in the middle of winter.” Nature usually answers this question for us, since geese do not start lying until early spring.  Geese don’t usually have babies in February.

These babies were a surprise! The goose had laid the eggs about 3 months early and managed to keep them warm during the coldest time of the year. The woman who was selling them had hundreds of chickens, geese, ducks and so it was easy for this one mother to go unnoticed in a dark corner of the barn. When she heard babies squawking, she was utterly surprised.

Having never had geese, I did not really think through what challenges might confront me regarding baby geese in February. I just took it as a sign these geese were meant to be mine. It was my birthday miracle.

I called the women and pleaded my case. I really wanted the birds and it was my Birthday! Could she please save them for me as I was about 3 hours away and knew someone much closer could snatch them up before I could drive to Burlington.

Seeing as how it was only 7:30am in the morning, she agreed to hold them till lunch. I hoped in the car and drove up to Burlington. Upon arriving, I met a women who like so many others I had met was hooked on “Chicken Math.”  Her house, her yard, her barns were filled with poultry. She even had a coop on her screened in deck!

Sweet as could be, she politely tried to decipher if I had what it took to give her prized babies a proper home. In the end, I think she let me take the geese more because I showed up with cash and solved her problem, then she felt I was the best home for the geese.  But, how hard could 4 tiny fluff balls be?

Well the short answer to that question is HARD! I had set up a brooder box in my bedroom as I thought it was the safest place in the house for my birthday babies. I did not know that unlike chicks, goslings are looking for attention 24/7. It is exhausting being a mother goose. The babies wanted me with them all the time and cried loudly when ever I left them. I tried to tire them out with “swims” in the bathtub and circles around the room, but still unless I bundled them up in my shirt and carried them around with me they would not stop crying!

So for the first few days I changed my clothes often and carted these spoiled birds around the house. What was I going to do? It would be weeks before I could put them outside. Well, at the end of the day there was very little I could do, but make the best of it. After a week or so of the carting around nonsense, they had grown enough to not need to be in my lap to stay warm and were content to make a mess on the floor by splashing and playing in their water bowl.

They still cried when I left the room, but would now quickly returned to playing amongst themselves. The price I paid for their new found independence was a giant mess to clean several times a day!

What on day one was the best Birthday ever, was by day thirty, an exhausted “Mother Goose” who promised to never again raise a gaggle of winter geese. But like most torturous things regarding raising babies, the time passed and soon enough spring came and the geese could go outside.

They loved their new outside home, their kiddy pool and fresh grass. Now, almost a year old, they are all grown up.

We call them our poodle geese as they strut around the yard showing the world their gorgeous plumage. The Gander now hisses at me when I pay his girls too much attention and I find myself nostalgic for the days they never wanted to leave my lap.  I get excited thinking about the babies that will arrive in the spring….and wonder what I would do if by chance my girls give me babies in February!