Goats and chicken tractor

Ah the things they say sometimes.

JP

 

Ok, the plot thickens, I thought about getting geese as they will eat the grass, deal with the dogs and any human intruders, great, but now I find they will die from the usual insignificant bird flu or whatever, May as well hire a security guard, give him a gun made of bamboo and cheap wire and ask him to cut the grass in his spare time.

 

I do tend to have a few random ideas now and then, the goat will happen though as I have convinced myself that it makes sense. Low cost to feed, have a pen now and I like the idea of having the dung for the garden; which is really my biggest hobby here.

The wife has enlisted her mom into finding us a young female goat, I honestly know nothing about raising them but Cherry's family has always raised some goats and it was one of her chores growing up so she knows what to do...plus I am only looking at one for now.

Shawn

 

There are some pretty simple designs out there for the chicken tractors and I think they can be built pretty inexpensively, especially with local materials. I have not seen any snakes around my house but mice and rats are a bit of a problem...if they are in the yard my dogs will get them, but have been setting traps at the nipa and will again soon around my garden. We got the last ones I heard in the nipa but saw a mouse the other night around the garden (my Dalmatian alerted me to it).

Shawn

 

We got a couple geese about 5 years ago, there are still a few of them running around now. I pretty much quit paying attention to them once the wife moved into town back in the day so the in laws have taken over their care. They definitely are loud and will alert you if someone is in the area. I never saw a village dog mess with one of the geese. The area we kept them in the village was close to the river so they seem to be pretty happy to spend most of their day swimming around.

Shawn

 

Quite, that's why they use Geese as Security measures in the Scottish Whiskey Distilleries.
JP

 

We don't get to the village as often as we should but the geese really do not like seeing me, I don't get nipped at but they really seem to take offense to seeing me. Once they get going even the ones that may happen to be swimming in the river come up to see what is going on. They eventually calm down if I ignore them.

I'm not sure if my dogs at the house or the geese at the village are the better alarm.

Shawn

 

I've been sketching up a couple ideas on the chicken tractor the past couple days and think I have a solid plan now. I was thinking about using the left over wood I had from the house build but am going to order some 2x2's today. The plan is for only 3 chickens and my design makes for a tractor that is 7' X 3.5' so I think I can get by with 2x2's for framing it out. I also want to make it look "local" so I will not use any plywood, just bamboo, nipa roofing, 2X2 framing and chicken wire.

Hopefully will start working on it today or tomorrow, depends on how long to get the 2X2's.

Shawn