Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Our two goslings survived their night in the barn and were only 'slightly' confused about how to get through the pop-hole this morning. Their Red Orpington 'mum' joined back up with them for the day and then promptly abandoned them again this evening as she headed in without them to find her perch for the night! As you can see they are now bigger than she is although all three are equally scruffy as the photo shows. The goslings have an excuse as they still have a huge number of their original 'downy' feathers and so when they get wet, they stay wet as they have not yet developed their true waterproof feathering. The Red Orpington seems to be moulting and has completely lost her tail!!! The grey duckling behind looks very smart in comparison: she is just seven weeks old. The goslings are not yet four weeks old but growing at an incredible rate, they currently weigh over 1.5kg!! They have started to come over at corn time and as the first photo shows have no problem picking the corn up from the ground and whenever we look out from our window we see them eating away at the grass!!
More bedtime chaos tonight as the eleven male ducklings plus Apple and her brood of eleven ALL decided to head for the pygmy stall and spend the night there. As it has been raining a lot today this meant 46 damp feet padding through the nice dry straw. We herded them all out but the damage was done, result: damp and mucky straw for the pygmies to lie on. Lovely!! It needed both of us to get all 23 birds to go in through the pop-hole on the other side of the barn and Apple was just as territorial and determined not to let the older males in as she was yesterday. The goslings were stars and despite being abandoned for the second night in a row, found their own way in and headed for the same corner they snuggled into last night. The turkeys also behaved and decided to head for the drier barn and not the trees tonight. We did clip their wings this morning mind you, which may have 'helped' them make their decision...
Finally, we think we saw a polecat in the paddock this morning: a wonderful but worrying sight!! Curds actually chased it away but we began to wonder if this is the animal responsible for the unexplained chick disappearances we have had!!! Polecats (and the related Polecat Ferret) are occasionally seen in Cornwall now: time for a bit of research!!