Foie and Gras are ready for goslings

Last things first:

I need a guinea/duck/goose sitter from March 14 to March 18. I'll probably locate someone up here. Requires once-a-day (at minimum) watering duty, feed checking, and bobcat chasing.

On February 22 I will let Foie and Gras start setting on some eggs. That way they'll hatch the week after I return from places afar. Not yet sure what I will let them sit on, because...

I do not yet know whether Pate the gander has done his duty. Today I am starting a one week test to see if the 7 goose eggs I have collected these past two weeks are viable. If so, then for the next 3 weeks I'll collect Foie's and Gras' eggs for hatching. If not, I will eat them and buy some known-good eggs from a local hatchery. They'll be foster mothers at least.

I know that Foie and Gras are ready for motherhood, not only because of the eggs, but because Gras bit me nice and hard two days ago as I was searching the nest for eggs (I still have the bruise to prove it). She will be a good mother.

Sally the Muscovy is also showing signs of mothering -- she sat on a single egg, spread out thin like a pancake as though she were covering a whole nest full.

My plans are to have her hatch a new generation of Pekins, as I don't have a male Muscovy for her. Pekins, in case you don't realize, are domesticated to such an extent that they are not such good mothers. They lay well, but the setting instinct has also been bred out. You don't want egg layers to be good hatchers because setting on eggs causes egg laying to stop. Muscovies are still close to their wild ancestry, and so are great mothers. I recall picking up Sally and her broodmates a few years ago; the mother sprang up into the air and slapped her wings and raked her claws against the guy who was scooping them all up. That's the right reaction.

On the water front, all is normal again. The well is producing a pathetic sub-gallon per minute rate of flow. That is why there are storage tanks I guess.