A little gosling take over!
The Duckery is over-run this year, not least with the influx of goslings coming our way!Never before have the Downy Duckling Day tours been blessed with so many little balls of fluff toddling across the grass...
To top it all off they contain species which we have been simply dying to breed. The blue-phase lesser snow, black Brant, Greater Magellan, Lesser white-fronted, Red-breasted and Ross's to name a few!
To me; 
nothing is cuter than a gosling. With their huge
dumpy bottoms and inquisitive faces, they would make a much better Andrex puppy. And boy do they need cleaning up after! Just a few days after hatch they are sprinting around within their coop, keeping those leg muscles strong and pooing all over the place! At three days their grazing urges completely take over, and you can often find them nibbling away willy-nilly with
their heads in the air as if they are sticking their tongues out at you. At this point they simply must have grass, and so at just three days they make their way outside for the first time... Here they graduate through a variety of sized coops until they are relatively self-sufficient at around 3-4 weeks.
One little white-phase lesser snow has a mallady which I have never come across before... I am reliably informed that he has a mummified yolk sack. What this has caused, is an overall distinct lack of bottom. He just does not have that ... pointed tail and defined end point you expect; more a sack of potatoes on the back! I will be very interested to see if his tail feathers grow through satisfactorily and whether the mummified sack very slowly depletes away. "Bottomless" has two reasons for his nickname; the second being he is always first in the food bowl!
Having recently been moved to a new bit of the grazing strip where "gasp" ducks live, the whole group is currently proving hillarious to staff through their complete inability to stand up for themselves. When it comes to feed time these great big squishy goslings career up to the bowl so excited and keen, but are easily herded away by a single Patagonian crested duck! They stand aside patiently twiddling their toes until the Pat has finished, and then dive onto the food bowl.
Their character is insurmountable, and I believe that the power of the gosling could cure almost any depression. You just cannot help but smile :D
03/07/11 Mo: What wonderful little goslings - they look so vulnerable and adorable. How I would love to be allowed to pick one up and stroke its soft down. So pleased you are having such a productive year. I think you have the very best job in the whole World! Well done!
03/07/11 Mo Warren: I agree! Goslings are the most wonderful creatures and I long to get photos from you Phoebe as a substitute for being amongst them. The little Greater Magellans are over a month old now and my last picture of them was at two weeks when I visited on June 16th. I know they are slow developers but you see them all the time so wouldnt be so acutley aware of their day-by- day changes. I long to get more pics of them as they grow up. PLEASE!
