Raising baby Vinny was definitely time consuming, but also had its rewards. Who can resist a newborn baby gosling?
I bought Vinny at a country store. I had been waiting for months for them to get their goslings in. I could barely contain myself when they finally arrived. I really wanted a male, so I stood staring at the baby chicks for a good long 15-20 minutes, observing the different features and personalities of each chick. Vinny seemed to be what you’d look for in a male chick. He stood tall and proud, was more on the outside of the group, and seemed to very have ever so slightly bigger legs.
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After leaving the store with Vinny, I took him out of the box as soon as I got into the car, so he wasn’t alone, and put him in my lap on a towel. He tried to wander a minute, and then went to sleep for the rest of the journey home.
He bonded almost immediately with me and would follow me all over the place. Of course, he also followed anything that moved at the time, even the dogs.
I started getting him familiar with his new routine. He got to know where his food/water/grit bowls were in the kitchen, going to the park, going to work, bedtime . . .
Our bedtime routine went surprisingly pretty well. I thought I was going to be faced with crying and chirping all night when he’d have to go to sleep in his crate. His crate had a layer of straw, and then I had a small fleece blanket with a small heat pad wrapped in center for him to sleep on. To help keep him company he had a white stuffed horse toy to sleep with. Finally, I’d play soft music for him on my laptop so that he wasn’t in complete silence, and then I’d cover the crate with a blanket to keep it dark in the morning until I could get to him. At best he’d cry for 30 seconds to a minute, but then he was perfectly silent for the rest of the night.
With him still being so small, he’d cuddle up to me for warmth. He loved to lay up in the cuff of my hoodie up near my neck and would just fall asleep. I had to make sure he came out every 10-15 minutes to make sure he didn’t poop. A lot of times he didn’t, but here and there he would have an accident, eww.
Work was the biggest struggle for Vinny as I couldn’t always be there for him. I would bring his crate to work and set it up in the office. I’d leave his crate open so that he could go in and out as he pleased, but many times if I wasn’t there, he’d end up going into the crate to cuddle with his toy buddy and take a nap. He wasn’t fond of the dog, but I’d try to make sure to leave my dog (Keeneye) in the room with him as a form of comfort. When I was around, he’d happily chirp, or play with items on the desk.
After work was the fun part, we’d go to a specific park I chose that has a beautiful pond, stream, grass, not a lot of other waterfowl, and not many (if any) off-leash dogs. We had a routine of playing in the stream portion which was nearest the parking lot, and we’d make our way around the pond, visiting a couple shoreline spots here and there.
Diapers were the least fun part. He grew so fast that there were a lot of times where he was in between diaper sizes, which made it difficult. When his more adult diapers would fill up, they’d bend down so that his poop would overshoot the diaper and go straight to the floor. For his small diapers, I’d fill them up with toilet paper for absorbency. As he graduated to larger diapers then I used paper towels. The bigger he got, the bigger and messier the poops became. His poops are the most formed and easiest to clean up when he eats grass vs a sloppy mess on his chick food or waterfowl pellets.
And that’s basically the day and a life of Vinny until he grew up and we moved to Colorado. As a young’n I almost never had him on leash, and he always kept close. With age, he’d still stick around, but he also became a little bit more independent and not come when I needed him to. So, for his safety he’d wear a harness and leash depending on where we were.
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