One moose two meese....

...One goose, two geese!

On Sunday two more little guys joined our backyard family. A member of a Yahoo! group I belonged to advertised that she had brand-new Pilgrim goslings for sale only 30 minutes south of me, so off I went!

According to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Pilgrims are one of six geese breeds that are critically endangered. This means that there are "fewer than 500 breeding birds in the United States, with five or fewer primary breeding flocks (50 birds or more), and globally endangered" (from the ALBC website). Obviously I can't do much individually to change those numbers with my tiny backyard flock, but I can join the effort to conserve heritage breeds such as the Pilgrim. One of my ducks is considered threatened and another is on watch. None of the chickens I have are critically endangered, although several of them are listed as watch or recovering. In the future I plan on adding critical and threatened breeds of ducks and chickens as well.

My new babies were hatched on my great-grandmother's birthday, so her name was given to my geese. Let's call the boy "Bolick" and the girl "Ida". They are so lovey! I used a towel to wrap up one of Grandma's clocks I inherited (she had collected dozens over the years, each set to a different time so she could have continual chiming throughout the day) and they fell asleep snuggled against it. Hopefully it serves as a soothing reminder of their mama's heartbeat.

Pictures will be coming soon!