I have a reputation amongst the crew here on the farm for trying some pretty crazy ideas. Luckily for me a few have worked. I like to look at a problem, which we should call an opportunity and see how we can creatively solve it. Way back when, in the ‘olden days’ as my sons call it, when I was at school, we had a teacher who was a big Edward DeBono fan. Mr De Bono wrote about lateral thinking. He thought that rather than going at a problem head on try and think laterally, look for solution that way. This has stuck with me all my life.
So, here is the problem... A few chickens always seem to get out of the fences. We have tried catching them and putting them back, no luck. We have tried jailing the culprits in a small chicken house in the field for a few days. As it is California the jail filled too fast so we had to let them out. The I saw an article about geese controlling chickens. So I had an idea. How about we run a narrow fenced area around the inside of the chicken fence and run geese in that. Like a no mans land for chickens. Last week 12 goslings arrived in the mail.
I was disappointed when Augustin seemed to think it might work. I expected rolling of the eyes.