Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The nearly dead gosling

This morning my sister discovered one of my younger goslings hanging from the fence by it's foot. I am guessing that the little bird was trying to get through the fence and into the doe pen, as there is some grass in there, and got caught in the fence. There are 2 layers of fence, about 4 inches apart, in the doe pen. One is about 6 feet high and the other is maybe 2 and a half feet high. I think that the goose probably managed to climb a foot or two up the fence before it found a hole that it would fit through. When it managed to squirm through the hole it fell down on top of the other layer of wire and got it's legs tangled up in it. Then it couldn't get free and ended up spending what I think was most of the night hanging head down by it's leg caught in the fence.
This morning Keely was over by the milk parlor and happened to look over across the doe pen. She saw a 'ball of grey fluff' caught in the fence and went over to investigate. A minute later she was yelling for me to get over there as she had found a dead gosling. When I got over she said that she thought it was still alive. I rushed over and disentangled the unfortunate gosling from the fence. It was still alive but it was very lethargic and it's had turned rather purple. We put it in the goose pen and it started to hobble around a little. It's leg is still very stiff but it seems to be getting better. At least we found it, as if we hadn't found it this morning then who knows when we would have found it. It would have almost certainly have been dead when we did, that is for sure. I now have to decide if I should lock up the young goslings so they don't go running around at night when the gate is shut or go around and try to fix all the things that they could get hurt on.

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