Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Somewhere under the water in the first photo there lies the goose you can see in the second photo (looks like someone doing a front crawl...). Despite his grumpy expression he had just had the time of his life!!! Our two goslings are goslings no longer!! At just seven weeks old they must already weigh somewhere around 7-8kg and despite still having a fair few of their downy feathers, are starting to look like 'proper' geese.
We decided today that they might prefer to be in the main poultry area with the pond and so 'shepherded' them out of the growers' paddock. They then had a mass panic as their environment became totally unfamiliar to them so we decided to manually lift them over the fence and steer them straight towards the pond.
It was utterly brilliant to watch them take their first plunge - we emptied, cleaned and refilled the pond yesterday so the water was beautifully clear and it was so funny to watch their feet start to paddle as for the first time in their lives, they swam!!
We think we have one male and one female, this is purely based on size: size of head, feet and general body which, as in a great many birds, are usually bigger in the male. The one in the photos is we believe the male and after a minute or two he had this most amazing mad 60 seconds where he just kept plunging his whole body under the water time after time... When he finally decided to stop he then stood in the shallow end and began a mass preening session. The female was not quite so energetic but nonetheless had a good few neck plunges before she too started to preen.
We are hoping this clean will have done their plumage the world of good: the downy feathers are not designed to be particularly waterproof but the true feathers are - and they do have a fair few of these now. As they preen more and more and spread the oil from their preen gland (found at the base of their tail) over their feathers and as the feathers themselves grow more, the goslings should start to look much smarter and shinier!!
These two are very nice looking birds so we are going to see if someone would like to buy them for breeding (though not with each other as they are probably brother and sister) rather than dispatching them for meat. Will keep you posted!!!