SILO SNIPPET

 UNBELIEVABLE! Yesterday just before dusk a magnificent looking fox ambled across the pasture ... with all eight peafowl in tow. He was like the Pied Piper as he trotted over the grass followed by five peanhens and the three peacocks. Was he trying to lure the birds into the bushes for a quick bite or were they chasing him away? Suffice to say I ran out across the fields and using the lure of corn brought the daft birds back to home base. Can anyone out there explain this bizzare behaviour?

EGG-GATE

.. Or Part II of the goose egg drama 

SINCE I dived in to the alien world of the small-holder, when I moved to the Scottish Borders from Soho in 2011, I've learned some weird and wonderful things like how to unblock an egg-bound hen using olive oil and hot steam and how to give a reluctant cockerel a wash 'n' blow dry and foot spa to get rid of a red mite infestation.

 But I think my latest foray into animal husbandry takes some beating. Recently I regaled you with the tale of my goose Vera whose attempt to build a nest and lay some eggs was being thwarted by a scavenging weasel or stoat.

 Vera then seemed to throw in the towel and stopped laying altogether. A friend of mine suggested I put a handful of golf balls inside her nest to encourage her to carry on ... and it worked. The Toulouse goose started laying more eggs and, as a precaution, I took a couple and replaced them with more golf balls to deter the intruder. Seemingly unaware of this duplicity Vera has carried on laying and yesterday she began sitting on the nest full-time.

 The nest is inside a ramshackled lean-to hubby built last year when Vera laid more than a dozen eggs - none of which hatched. The previous year she only hatched one but sadly Peewee, her offspring, was taken by a fox just as his feathers were starting to come through.

The job of returning the eggs

would prove more difficult 

 So you see Vera's attempts at motherhood have been punctuated with failure and tragedy which I think has also been reflected in Jack the gander's moods.

HATCHING HOUSE: Jack guards the
outside while Vera sits on her nest

 Now that she has moved out of the goose house full-time to sit on the eggs, Jack has been patrolling outside with all the ferocity of a pit bull backed up by Bluebell. Trying to return the two eggs I'd taken previously has not been an easy task. Whenever Vera has taken a break from sitting on the eggs Bluebell steps in and Jack is never far away from guarding the lean-to. This time all three geese are determined that there will be a new generation to rear and follow them.

Even the arrival of the postman, who now no longer gets out of his mail van, has failed to distract Jack from his sentry duty and nor could he be bribed by a bag of tasty morsels. As you can see from my amateur video, Jack is not in the mood for shenanighans.

 Eventually, after using some stealth I managed to put the two eggs down next to Vera last night as she was napping and this morning I noticed they were safely tucked under her along with the golf balls. Incubation is going to take between 28 and 35 days so I'm hopeful we might have some goslings before the General Election in the UK on May 7.

FEATHERING HER NEST: Vera pulls feathers from her ches

to line the nest including golf balls as well as eggs!

 Of course there's many a slip between then and now. We have to keep the area fox free and Vera will be most vulnerable at night after dusk. There's also a large badger sett nearby so we need to ensure that they're not around - one badger did take Queenie, a swedish Kohn goose from her nest the day before they were due to hatch back in 2013 hence hubby's decision to build the lean-to around the nest.

 If you have any tips please let me know. Hopefully the next reports on Jack and Vera will be happy ones.