the daydream fund challenge thread

lostinrates

I'll be honest, if I had known how messy geese were I don't know if I'd have got them.
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The three geese make more mess than the chickens hands down. I'd estimate as much as about 100 chickens would! Plus it doesn't sweep in the same way, so I'm going to have to hose the yard down a lot. Now, consider I am a woman not shy or wary about poo, and today dealt with the normal increased autumn/winter season poo load with horses -we counted they averaged 20 poos each in the field ion ONE DAY, so I can handle a fair bit of !!!! nwithout complaint- but the geese make a lot of work. extra.

Then there are the feathers....a constant drop of bright white feathers every where.They are a nightmare to sweep too, and in grass are a pain to rake, so we leave them but they look a mess.

Geese, though absolutely adorable and very much part of our family now are IMO FAR from low maintenance!

Davesnave

lostinrates wrote: »

Geese, though absolutely adorable and very much part of our family now are IMO FAR from low maintenance!

See above. I was sceptical and open to others' opinions. Looks like I'm getting them!

Pete's geese go where they like, so I suspect they have acres to wander over. This is quite a small area, by comparison

lostinrates

Davesnave wrote: »

See above. I was sceptical and open to others' opinions. Looks like I'm getting them!

Pete's geese go where they like, so I suspect they have acres to wander over. This is quite a small area, by comparison

The poop won't be so much of an issue on grass. I'd say ours stay mainly in the yard most distant from the house and the say....50-70 yards of field closest to that. Over there the feathers aren't TOO much of an issue at all...its field. but the yard and in a garden/area you look out over it would be less picturesque! It looks like litter.:o

rozeepozee

alfie_1 wrote: »

i conclude that less stalls and same amount of people = more sales !!:D

I love it!


Do geese really poo quite so much???

Me and DP currently in huge debate about whether to buy somewhere with no land, only a garden that ticks nearly all of the other boxes. Problem is, for me, a decent amount of land was a very large box. It does have edge of village location, walking distance to school, in picturesque village where holiday letting would be easy, somewhere you would want to go on holiday, decent sized, 4 bed character house, separate letting cottage.... It's so tricky. Arrgh! Huge life decisions.....

lostinrates

rozeepozee wrote: »

I love it!


Do geese really poo quite so much???

Me and DP currently in huge debate about whether to buy somewhere with no land, only a garden that ticks nearly all of the other boxes. Problem is, for me, a decent amount of land was a very large box. It does have edge of village location, walking distance to school, in picturesque village where holiday letting would be easy, somewhere you would want to go on holiday, decent sized, 4 bed character house, separate letting cottage.... It's so tricky. Arrgh! Huge life decisions.....

How big is the garden? As some of your tick boxes are almost mutually exclusive I think you are wise to consider some alternatives, but only workable ones!

re goose poo, yes, they do. But on grass that wouldn't be the problem, apart from parasite control. Because we have a very large concrete farm yard, well, two yards really, we can see very, very clearly the difference. With the chickens, when the horses were out we could go a long time without needing to sweep, a week certainly didn't look disreputable. Now, if we sweep in the morning and the geese have stayed in the yard then its a mess again by the evening. Plus, it doesn't sweep well, so we all grumble a bit about it.

Gpood things about the geese are their beautiful, but slightly sad, faces and blue eyes, the guarding aspect of them, and that in character they are very unlike other poultry I have known.

rhiwfield

Neighbour kept geese, huge lawn area all covered with goose poo! And I used to walk to work in London via Hyde Park, where you had to dance round the canada geese droppings.

And the noise, as Owen Morgan said "There is perturbation and music in Coronation Street! All the spouses are honking like geese and the babies singing opera. P.C. Attila Rees has got his truncheon out and is playing cadenzas by the pump, the cows from Sunday Meadow ring like reindeer, and on the roof of Handel Villa see the Women's Welfare hoofing, bloomered, in the moon"


Got that out of my system , must be the rain yet again, washing away a distant memory of a dry hot spell in Spring, as seen through a damp mist darkly.

Davesnave

rozeepozee wrote: »

Me and DP currently in huge debate about whether to buy somewhere with no land, only a garden that ticks nearly all of the other boxes. Problem is, for me, a decent amount of land was a very large box. It does have edge of village location, walking distance to school, in picturesque village where holiday letting would be easy, somewhere you would want to go on holiday, decent sized, 4 bed character house, separate letting cottage.... It's so tricky. Arrgh! Huge life decisions.....

They are huge decisions, so don't take them lightly.

Remember, we were looking around in Wales for 3 years, both when we were procedable and unprocedable. In that time, we saw only a handful of properties which came close.....but our perception of what we wanted also changed through the experience of looking.

Circumstances actually saved us from ourselves a couple of times.:o

Two years on, and our place here is probably not what we'd now choose to buy either, which we've discovered by owning land, finding out about the responsibilities it brings and the cost of those in time and materials. However, we have good friends/ag partners, and so we can live with that. What I'm less certain about is the expense of renovating this place, with the prospect of pouring money into something that's not selling well at present (Ag- tied houses.)

With apologies to those living in Wales, you are in a similar position to us. Properties aren't moving well and prices are falling. Maybe it will turn around at some point, but I don't see much prospect of that for some while. So would I go and throw hundreds of thousands at a property in West Wales right now? Of course I would, but only if I was 100% cast iron certain that it was exactly what I was looking for!

lostinrates

Davesnave wrote: »

With apologies to those living in Wales, you are in a similar position to us. Properties aren't moving well and prices are falling. Maybe it will turn around at some point, but I don't see much prospect of that for some while. So would I go and throw hundreds of thousands at a property in West Wales right now? Of course I would, but only if I was 100% cast iron certain that it was exactly what I was looking for!

My dad delivered me the local free mag for their area recently. Having not taken property prices as seriously in the last year I was gobsmacked at the drops in prices of places with a little land and then the ''nice'' places we would have liked to be able to afford but never thought we would.


Davesnave, I don't know how much you've budgeted for a remodel.

lostinrates

OMG I'm so upset. I found big dog on her bed with a dead chicken this evening when putting the dog-dog out after supper (the dogs eat separately because big dog is a food bully). The gates were shut so chicken must have wriggled under. And it wasn't any old chicken, it was my beloved Cuckoo, the chicken I'd had since the first flock I had as an adult.

She was such a lovely bird, cuddly and funny and the cockerals favourite.

I really do not like the dog very much tonight. Dog dog is trying to keep as far away from Big dog as possible so not to be tainted by her crime.

choille

Animals eh?
Sorry about that LIR - such a thing reminds us how near the wild pets are sometimes.

Ffffffat cat spent a while chewing a huge endangered water vole under the bed last night then got under the covers dripping wet & wondered why I shreiked at him.