We bought our 2 romain tufted geese when they were a few weeks old and they are now 16 months old. The were about 3 months old when we finished building a 7,000 gal pond for them and eventually the 2 turtles we had. The first day we filled it they were 3 months old, I tried to get them in but they didn't want to go so I jumped in and they jumped in. They loved it, dove way down and popped up beside me. The next day they went in when I went in, the third day the pond wasn't so clean so I didn't want to go in but helped them in, they stayed for a short period of time and got out, showing no interest in returning. Later when they were drinking from it I nudged one in and she stayed a little while but never went back. They love their baby pool but they won't even go near the pond. We upgraded their baby pool when they got older and bigger and they had the hardest time picking their feet up when they got in, as if they would sink or something. We would like to upgrade that pool but afraid to waste the money they seem to be afraid of the depth of the water. I guess like kids they are not all the same. Who would have guessed!!!

Hi Dale!!!! How are you? Long time no see. I hope the business is doing great. I always was a horrible typist, but I did start out as a 'stenographer' at General Dynamics in the earliest 1980s. Even though they hired me for my shorthand (140 words per minute, I'm proud to say), I mostly typed and this was back when we had to type on IBM Selectric typewriters and and then had to learn to type on computers (called word processors at the time) and I hated them. LOL In the mid-1980s we had to start using a brand new (in the business world) process called 'Electronic Mail' on our brand new computerized word processors and I didn't like it either and could not see its' worth, which just goes to show that I am not good at spotting trends! So, I guess I've been typing a long time but never especially liked it...and didn't stay a stenographer long either, promoting out of secretarial work and into first a personnel administrative job and then later an accounting job before I quit my job in the early 1990s to do the whole stay-at-home-mom thing. I then spent the rest of the 1990s and even the earliest 2000s avoiding computers because I had my fill of them at work all those years. After we moved to a fairly remote, rural area ihere in Oklahoma in the late 1990s, I eventually had to learn to like my computer and communicate on it in order to stay in touch with what was going on in the real world. Now, of course, I cannot imagine my life without electronic communication. I do always write long threads, though, and that's just me trying to be thorough and complete and cover all the bases. Hope you're well and looking forward to another great garden year. Dawn

We have 6 white domestic ducks and one mallard that I rescued from work. I tried putting floating food in the pond, we put feeder comets in the pond that are not even half an inch long.We have a large kennel that is enclosed and over hangs the pond by a foot so they have a safe place to get away from raccoons or anything else that may want to hurt them. We put their food in the kennel they would not go in to eat. We put them in the kennel so the only way out was through the pond, no dice, they stayed there 2 days and couldn't get through the pond fast enough. It was kinda funny to watch but I still would like them to enjoy the pond again. This is frustrating.

I need help IDing a duck. It was slightly larger than a mallard, had a pink bill with black/brown mottling/ had a black head with a white ring around the eye, a white ring around its neck, a light grey back, its legs seemed to be set further back on its body than the mallard (which leads me to believe it may be a diving duck?) and were a brownish grey color, and its tail was fairly wide and stuck up like a ruddy duck, but it was WAY bigger than a ruddy duck and other than the tail, looked nothing like a ruddy duck. It was the only one of its kind with some local mallards (4-5 drakes in eclipse plumage, 4-5 females, and about 5 or 6 of this year's juveniles), in a slow moving small creek (maybe 20-30 ft across and maybe 3 ft deep at the deepest). Can't figure out what this duck is, maybe a hybrid, a juvenile, or a drake in eclipse plumage, or some combination??? Any help or directions to who (or where) I should go for help would be appreciated!