Farm Fresh: New Goslings, Turkey Poults update, and Old Rabbits

Our Toulouse Goslings arrived in the mail this week along with some Blue Swedish (for brother S and his obsession with all things blue) and Cayuga ducklings.  We are very excited to have blue and black duck eggs from these new ducks. The goslings look a lot like ducklings, just larger. There are 16 currently, but 8 belong to another farmer.

 The all black ducklings are the Cayugas.  The great thing about getting them from the hatchery is that I was able to specify that I wanted 3 females and 1 male.

 Here is a good picture to show the size difference between the goslings and ducklings:

 Here are big sister A's ducklings. 3 weeks old and huge compared to the new babies.

 The turkey poults are growing well.  We are down to 6 now that everyone has picked up theirs.

And on the rabbits... I finally decided I really HAD to do some butchering.  The three left from our first litter were getting old (and tough). I used the method my farm vet suggested as top 3 most humane for rabbits. It was to stun with a captive bolt gun - a shot through the brain and then cut the jugular just like with a chicken.   All of the videos make it look very straight forward, but I was feeling very ill about the whole plan.
 I think the first two went as well as could be for a novice. They were truly stunned and I was able to cut the jugular fairly smoothly. The third one was bad. The stun must have gone through the wrong part of the brain. He screamed :(  I was traumatized, but obviously had to break his neck and finish the job.  I have decided that while I could competently butcher rabbits, it is too sickening for me to butcher mammals. Especially ones that were gently raised to be sold as pets first choice. I am not going to do any more rabbit butchering.
 I love raising them. Their poop is doing amazing things for my garden and it has been so fun seeing them go to good homes as pets. We hopefully will have some 4H rabbit shows in our future. And yes, there will be extra rabbits and I will have to take those to one of the local butchers. (One quoted me 3$ a rabbit another $2.50.) At least I can be sure that he will do a quick job of it and no rabbit will suffer unduly.