Reminiscence - the poultry

Jump to Comments

My mother went through a stage of poultry breeding while I was in high school. In addition to the chooks, which we kept for eggs and sentimental value, she bred runner ducks (because of a fondness for Leunig cartoons and the runner ducks which are scattered through them), and Chinese geese, an elegant breed with a swan-like neck and cream and brown colouring.

When the geese laid eggs, we would remove them from their angry parents and place them carefully in an incubator inside mum and dad’s bedroom. We marked the eggs on one side with pencil and turned them each day. I remember wondering why we had to be so exact, as I was certain the geese were a bit more casual in their nesting practices. In a darkened room, we would hold the eggs up against the beam of a torch, checking them for a line which would mark fertilisation.

Within about a month, the eggs would begin to hatch. Walking past the incubator, you would hear loud, insistent peepings, and be certain that a gosling had hatched within its confines. However, upon inspection, usually only the tip of a tiny beak peeked through a hole in its shell, announcing its imminent arrival to the world. We would carefully move the egg to the hatching box, under an infra-red lamp, and watch as the slimy, tiny creature made its way out of the egg.

It’s an exhausting process. Generally, once they have broken a hole large enough for their head to stick through, they rest, sometimes sleeping with their bodies still inside the shell. Then they struggle out, widening the hole, and slipping out to lie panting on the straw.

Newly hatched goslings are terribly unattractive. Their down lies pastered to their skin, and as a result their head and feet look too large for their bodies. After hatching they sleep in a comatose state under their lamp and gradually dry, their down fluffing out into a yellow aura. Their siblings hatch, and lie next to them for warmth and comfort. Hours later, a pile of fluffy goslings sleep together, occasionally waking and peeping stridently for food and attention.

Goslings are enormous fun to play with. My brother and I used to fill the gutter running along with verandah with water from the hose, and “teach them to swim”. After an energetic ten minutes of paddling, the goslings would collapse onto the grass in the sun and sleep. We lay next to them, thick grass tickling our legs, and watched, wary of the greedy eyes of predatory birds spotting our babies on the lawn below.

When you hatch and hand rear goslings yourself, they become very imprinted on human beings. When the balls of fluff grew to be gangling teenage geese, their peeping occasionally slipping into awkward honks just as a teenage boy’s voice breaks, they followed mum around the garden, gathering worshipfully at her feet. “Babies! Baaaabies!” she would call to them at night, and the teenage hoard, “peepeeepeeepHONK”ing, would rush at her, and follow her to their shed to be locked safely away from the pythons which lurked in the trees, attracted by the smell of goose.

I miss being around poultry. They are a lovely presence to have in the garden, even when they scratch up your tomato seedlings, or cover the area outside your back door with squashy piles of poo. I miss sitting on the verandah, and hearing the gentle murmurings of chooks as they went about their business, or bathed themselves in dusty hollows, stretching their wings luxuriously over their backs. I miss the pale white runner ducks, floating peacefully on the dam, and the Chinese geese, those beautiful brown and cream feathers, and the crowd running at the call of “Babies!” at the fall of dusk.

2 Comments

Filed under animals, childhood, memories