Alaskan's Journal

[Alaskan]

So much rain... the goose pen is a mud poo swamp.

Not sure how to alleviate that. No good way to get water to drain from there. I have to look at it harder...figure something out. Heavy rain every day for a few weeks now.

The path I walk to the pond coop is a slick mud trap... hard to walk it without slipping.

I am thinking I need a machine of some kind... like a rototiller, to cut in a new and flatter path to the pond coop. I have no such thing...

Maybe I will have kids at Thanksgiving cut me a better path. I should have 4 boys at Thanksgiving.

 

[Finnie]

So much rain... the goose pen is a mud poo swamp.

Not sure how to alleviate that. No good way to get water to drain from there. I have to look at it harder...figure something out. Heavy rain every day for a few weeks now.

The path I walk to the pond coop is a slick mud trap... hard to walk it without slipping.

I am thinking I need a machine of some kind... like a rototiller, to cut in a new and flatter path to the pond coop. I have no such thing...

Maybe I will have kids at Thanksgiving cut me a better path. I should have 4 boys at Thanksgiving.

My goose pen turns into a mud poo swamp too. Partly due to rain but a lot due to them loving to play in their water and splash it out. Plus, when I dump the waters and hose the inches of dirt out of the bottom, I add to the wet mess.

I have tried a few things. I used concrete blocks to make a base for the water pan. They just made a mud moat around the blocks. I tried adding more blocks to make a “patio”. That just made a larger diameter mud moat. (A little bit easier for me and the geese to stand near the water dish though once I made it over the moat. Until they undermined it and the edge block started to tip when I stepped on it.)

Right now I’m using free hay someone gave me to cover/fill in the mud so I can walk right over it. That lasts for a couple weeks until it gets soggy and squishy again. And it takes a lot of hay.

One thing that worked pretty well was to fill the mud areas with brush from cutting down tall weeds. Think goldenrod and thistle stems. I probably wouldn’t use pig weed- too pokey. Very thin tree branches etc. I laid them haphazardly in different directions and they made a pretty solid well draining mat above the mud. That’s what I intend to do with all suitable brush and weeds from now on. It took longer for that to sink down in the mud than the hay. But eventually it did. The one issue though is that if for any reason you need to dig that out, the criss-crossed sticks are nearly impenetrable.

I’m pretty much resigned to their night pen being a mud dungeon, and then they can get away from it during the day when they free range. They don’t trash the free range area nearly so badly. I dream of having a pond for them at my next place.

 

[Alaskan]

Very thin tree branches etc. I laid them haphazardly in different directions and they made a pretty solid well draining mat above the mud.

Brilliant! That sounds very doable and I love the free aspect.

And yes, I have decided that their night pen will just be horrid... and there we are.

I dream of having a pond for them at my next place.

I have a pond, and the geese are scared of it! My first set of geese didn't like it either!

I REALLY tried to get them to go into the pond to get cleaned off... they will go to the edge, drink out of the pond, and then they leave.

When bride and kid #2 were spending so much time with the geese, they tried tossing peas on the pond to get the geese to enter... with the peas the geese would step into the water to grab the peas, but they refused to swim.

WATERfowl! Ha!


My ducks love the pond.

 

[Alaskan]

Guess what...

Yep, rain again.

 

[Finnie]

I wonder why they won’t go in the pond. Do they have a kiddie pool they’re used to going in? You would think that they would see the ducks going in and then copy.

 

[Alaskan]

I wonder why they won’t go in the pond. Do they have a kiddie pool they’re used to going in? You would think that they would see the ducks going in and then copy.

With the kiddie pool their feet are always on the ground...

The pond has an entrance slope.. but there they don't even want to wade a little.


They do not like floating.

 

[Alaskan]

Still raining

 

[Finnie]

Silly geese!

 

[Baymule]

You have weird ducks.

 

[Alaskan]

Bride is here for the week..

She took the older ducks swimming. The one female, Pie almost acts like she is drowning... she dives and then super splashes, messes around... but has trouble figuring out "float calmly".

I let the geese out again this morning...

1 gander somehow got left behind the flock... he is alone in the pen... and is too scared to join the others....

I have let him be for a bit... see if maybe I was stressing him out. But... he is always a bit shy. No, not picked on by the others... but not leading the flock like the other 3 ganders.

And guess what, RAINING again today.

*deep sigh*