I never really wanted geese. My previous experience with them was that they were crazed, and aggressive, and not much fun at all.

When we took over this place the departing owner had the geese, and couldn't take them with him. It obviously distressed him so I said I would take them just to get the pressure off him. I still had to buy them though!
But I've enjoyed the experience. That's despite…they've been a disaster as a breeding livestock, with predator incidents causing all sorts of events. They are woeful parents, and each year surprise me with their inept care. There's been tragedy and grief, and all sorts of complicated stories with individual geese that's been surprising at times.

But they can be hilarious. One goose follows me out the gate every time, on the off-chance I'll notice her and toss her one more treat before I go. They chase each other in circles, so if I put the feed out in a ring they race round and round trying to catch up to the goose in front.

They have the benefit of the quarry-like pit in their paddock, the remnant of last century gold mining. It's pretty shallow. Over the years the walls surrounding the pond have worn down, leaching clay into the pond which settles and seals it, but slowly fills it up. On a good day it looks like an abandoned quarry. In the right light it looks quite pretty, and we are slowly filling it with trees and making something attractive.

So, by the end of summer its usual for the half-a-soccer-field pond to evaporate down to two small round ponds, then evaporate down to a clay pan that bakes dry in February and March.

So by February I'm usually watching their water, making sure the tanks we have don't run out. The system we set up is not bad….it catches enough rain that if we have one decent downpour a month over summer I don't have to cart water. By my maths we catch 28 litres for every 1 mm of rain, so if we get, say, the normal 50mm over January that fills their tank for a few weeks.

But not this year! This year we had rain, in big chunks, in both January and February. We actually had double the normal average, in two massive dumps. Some of the benefit is wasted…my system only holds 1000 litres, so the excess runs off. But the plus was that the goose pond replenished, just a bit, and in fact is still not quite dry now.

So I thought that was a good thing. No. It's not.

We had the rain, bit it was still hot. The shallow pond, much nourished by geese enthusiastically dumping manure in it as vigorously as they could, boiled in the direct sun. It's never happened before, because the pond is normally dry, but this year we had an astonishingly rapid outbreak of red algae. In the morning the pond would be thick and greenish with sludge. By the afternoon it was an amazingly bright sunspot of red, gone by the morning.

But it was poisonous. On the second day it bloomed I came over to feed the geese. A few short, I don't keep accurate track of them but there were obviously a few missing. Could be a fox, its happened before, best to walk around the fenceline and check.

I didn't get far. On the precipice edge of the quarry I looked down, five dead geese floating in the pond. A few days later there was a dead crow there. I don't know if it affects the frogs and lizards that live there.

So, although we've had more summer rain than normal, I'm hauling water to make sure there's plenty, and no one needs to resort to drinking from the pond.