Barnyard Soaps Part I

animals have thier pecking order; Over the years we have owned many critters and many have displayed quite a lot of character.

About 6 years ago in May we acquired an Emden Gander,A Talouse goose and six goslings. We named the Gander Fernando and shortened it to Nado. His mate we named Clemintyne and shortned her name to Tyne. That first year the geese did well, wandering around our twenty plus acres, mostly confining themselves to the house area and barnyard. Nado and Tyne were life mates though different breeds of geese. Their offspring were half Emden and half Talouse.

Nado was an aggressive male goose, challenging cat, dog, man and all manner of critter over terrain and how close they got to his little family. He tried to bite me a few times but I just grabbed his neck and told him to knock it off. He learned that I was the boss not him in certain instances. The dogs he would chase and bite and the cats avoided him and Tyne alike, They hated their hard flapping wings and having tails pinched in the strong bills.

My grandkids too would not venture to close to the geese unless I or my husband was along. Otherwise Nado would do his hissing and snake neck look and run after them and the kids would come screaming that he was trying to bite them.

Tyne was not a very good mother however and her goslings did not mind her at all. It was Nado that did the discipling of his offspring. Chasing them, biting tails and pecking them when they wandered to far afield.

Once they ran off and two fell into a hole my husband was digging for posts. We had gone to town to get some supplies and saw only four goslings, We looked all over for the others and could not find them. We figured somehow the cat had some how got past Nado and caught them. The next morning my husband found them still alive but thirsty and hungery in the hole he was getting ready to drop a post in.

Nado was delighted with the return of his children, muttering and scolding them he herded them up the hill away from the fence we were building. Tyne ignored them preening her feathersm eating grass and sunning herself. Nado led the goslings to a small pond and watched over them as they splashed, dipped thier heads and swam about seeking bugs.

As the Goslings grew and began to feather out we learned we had 4 females and 2 males. They were looking quite nice and healthy. Then one day we came home and noticed only the four female goslings, Tyne and Nado. No male goslings.

We went looking and found one of them hiding inside an old camper shell. The other one had drowned in the water tub. How we had no idea.

We felt bad and took the dead critter off and buried it. Later that day we heard a lot of flapping of wings, and screaming honking geese. Running out with the gun, my husband thought a coyote or something was after them. What he saw was Nado jumping on the remaining male half grown gander and drowning him in the water tank. We chased Nado off and rescured the near drowned gander and seperated them.

In case some are unaware. Geese usually mate for life and Nado was jealous of his sons who was making what he thought were aggressive moves on his mate Tyne. So he decided to murder them.

We then purchased some African geese, 4 males and 1 female Chinese goose and we ended up with an extra African male the former owner threw in. The four African gander's paired up with Nado and Tyne's daughters and the Chinese goose became the remaining son of Nado's mate.

That left one lonely Bachlor male goose we called Wheezer because he had a wheezing type of honk. He was as big as Nado and soon he began making advances on Tyne. He would chase her around the barnyard and try and corner her. She would scream "rape, rape, help! Nado would come honking, wings flapping and beat the tar out of Wheezer who would fight back but when the other males helped he would retreat to a far corner of the barnyard to sulk until he tried another move.

Occassionally he would try and target one of the other females but he was always driven off by the united front mates of the females.

As fall approached we made a huge warm shelter for the geese that they could go in and out of at will. We got grass hay to feed them and cracked corn. They also liked greens like lettuce or spinach and bread we got from the bread store discard. About November we heard a cacaphoney of honking geese outside about 5:30 a.m. It was one of those rare frosty sunny mornings. Getting up I quickly dressed and ran out to the pen.

There was a bobcat in the goose pen, but he was a most unhappy fellow. The geese were pummeling him with beating wings, nipping his fur and ears and pecking at him. He was cornered in one side of the pen, hissing and snarling and trying to find bite the geese and claw them. He had thought he was going to snatch one of the sleeping geese but found that geese always leave at least one sentinal on duty at all times. Within seconds of his attempt to nab one he had 13 honking, biting wing flapping geese at him.

When the geese saw me they ran honking and flapping toward me, All but Nado and Wheezer who kept slapping the cat with thier wings. The little bobcat however finding the majority of geese leaving made his break and leapt over the fence and ran a few feet up the hill. There he sat and glared at me and the geese with baffeled eyes, he licked his fur a few times, snarled once and then with a twitch of his stubby tail he indignantly ran up the hill and into the brush. We never saw him again.

The geese settled down to a winter of contentment other than Wheezer once in awhile trying to cozy up to one of the females. Or some black crows that would try and fly down to steal cracked corn. The geese would then all yell and flap wings running at the crows who would fly up into a tree and caw at the geese, watching for another opportunity to snatch a few kernels of corn.

As March approached Tyne and one of her daughters both began to lay eggs in a scooped out corner of the pen. They had lined it with straw and down pulled from thier breast area. The two females fought over the nest and eggs. Windy the daughter would sit for hours but the second she was off the nest for a bite of food or drink of water, Tyne jumped on the nest and would not let her daughter back on.

This kept up for 2 weeks. Alas we got one last snow followed by a deep freeze and the unhatched eggs froze and did not hatch. All the geese seemed to go into a despondant mourning period and for some reason the geese began to die on us, some malady we could not figure out. We finally ended up with Tyne, Wheezer and Nado left of the geese we had started out with during the fall. They pulled through.

In late April Tyne kept finding ways to escape the pen and would run off much to Nado's concertation and he would pace back and forth along the pen, honking for her to get back inside with him or trying to find ways to squeeze his large body through holes that he could not fit through. Then Wheezer found a way out of the pen too and Nado screamed with indignation, honking and flapping his wings. He screamed obsenties at Wheezer and called Tyne a two timing cheap floozy.

Wheezer chased a coy Tyne all over the place. She would let him rub necks with her, feed next to her and then when he began to get lovey she would take off flapping her wings and run away. Nado would dive at the fence not able to escape and rage in harsh honking tones at the two of them togather. The look of murder in his eye, he hated Wheezer and wanted to kill him, but Wheezer kept well clear of Nado and triumphantly pursued his intended lady love. Tyne let him think she wanted his affections but would spurn him when ever he became overly amourous.

She made Nado and Wheezer both crazy with her flirtous ways, but always went back to her mate Nado in the end and he would take her back. Wheezer would then honk at Tyne telling her she was a cheap whore and slut, which made Nado fly at him to beat him with his wings but Wheezer would flap away out of reach, knowing Nado could not get out of the pen at him. This kept up for about two weeks.

Then one day I went out to my rose garden to do some weeding and there sat Tyne hissing at me and grumbling, ruffling her feathers. She was sitting on 7 eggs. Nado's or Wheezer's I could not say.

Wheezer escaped when he saw me with her and tried to make love to her again but she would have nothing to do with him. Meanwhile Nado screamed how he was going to kill Wheezer for messing with his woman. Then to Wheezer's shock his lady love began screaming at him, flapping her wings and hissing and biting and chasing him away. She wanted nothing at all do with him and so he went to sulk and pout with two bachlor roosters that pecked bugs in the yard.

Grumbling Tyne got back on the nest where I left her be for three weeks and she hatched off six downy goslings. She then marched them before Nado who inspected each one and both he and Tyne chased Wheezer out of the barnyard. He was not allowed back in with them at all and moped around with the two roosters the rest of the summer

Toward fall he was finally allowed to be the uncle of the kids. While Tyne and Nado wandered off togather they would leave the goslings in Wheezer's care.

That fall however hubby said he was tired of all goose crap and the expense of feeding them another winter so we sold the entire family and they went to live 70 miles south of us on a nice pond. Wheezer is happy there as he finally found a life mate and so are the rest of the geese. So ends the saga of Nado, Tyne and Wheezer

Stay tuned for The Next Episode of Barnyard Soaps.