Freegrace Friday! On a Thursday! The Welsh Harlequin Ducks...all grown up
I am suffering the grave misfortune of traveling to Paris today. Poor me.
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| From left to right, Dame Shirley, Hester, Lady Tom (she's stretching) and Marjorie. |
I'll take pictures of all the wonderful things I eat and share them when I return home in a week. In the meantime, things are growing beautifully at Freegrace. The Welsh Harlequin Ducks especially. Dame Shirley, Lady Tom, Hester and Marjorie are some of the prettiest lady birds I've ever raised. And boy oh boy, are they mellow. They have turned out to be wonderful companions for my sweet swan goose and best bird pal, Mama.
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| Egg comparison: Mama the goose's egg on the left. Dame Shirley's duck egg in the middle and Lacy the hen's egg on the right. |
The ladies have barely begun to lay. Often, there are a few test runs before the girls start laying in earnest (Welsh Harlequins lay more eggs per year than the best laying hen). Mama has decided to get in on the action and started laying again herself. Geese don't lay year round. Most often, they pick a time in the early spring and then in the late summer. There's really no set schedule. Especially with swan geese like Mama. I suspect, sensitive beauty that she is, she's started to sympathy lay; to show the young lasses how it's done. Am I anthropomorphizing my birds yet again? Yes. But in the case of Mama, I think I'm spot on.
I leave you with a video of what my early mornings look like walking out with the birds. You can bet that I'm going to miss doing this despite all the treats in store for me in Paris!
