Mods- please move to "Geese"?- Growing Goslings! - Page 5

yep, mine like the red and white chick waterer too, and i am using gro-gel too.  they are such fun little babies and so fuzzy!  ours must have been hatched together.  i will find my 3rd "D"  name, feminine one soon.  good luck with the "P" posse!!!

Its good to see others catching the Pilgrim bug. I received a pair from a local breeder last weekend and they are staying in my laundry room. They are getting used to us going in and out. When we put them on the floor they will chase my daughter all through the house honking like mad. She held them on the way home when I got them and they think she is "momma". Its fun. She named them Sid and Lucy. We had a breeding trio of Buff geese that were extremely docile but were just to big for our little barnyard hobby farm. I think a pair of Pilgrims will be just right for us.

I'm sorry about your little guy.
I don't think you did anything wrong. Some of them don't make it. Could have been shipping stress, or something else.
I picked up goslings and ducklings last year, they were not shipped. All seemed to be doing well at first, but one of the ducklings just became less and less active and stopped eating and died on day 3.
Hope the others are doing well tonight.

edited to add photos:

gander on right, goose on left


She was bigger than he was for the first week or so.

Sorry about your baby! One of the other looks a little lighter, so maybe you do have another boy.

It's really hard to tell, but from the pictures it almost looks like you have three boys and a little girl. It's awful to tell the gender when you're dealing with hatchery stock.

The easiest way to tell is that females have dark bills and males have light bills. As they grow, the colors will become more defined as the down on the female's becomes darker. Usually you can tell the difference even in hatchery stock by two weeks of age. The brightest yellow babies should be the males, the darkest grey the females.


With goslings, never, ever trust a "calm" one. They're supposed to be bouncy and chatty. Any of them that are calm don't have the energy to bounce and play like a baby should.

If any of the others become mellow, squirt some honey into their water. That normally gives them an energy boost. Make sure they stay in the brooder and, if possible, provide little boxes for them to sleep in. The boxes aren't for shelter or warmth or anything like that. They're to provide a road block for when another gosling happily runs back and forth in the brooder over everyone else. Not being bowled over all the time gives the weaker guys a chance to sleep longer with fewer interruptions.

Good luck with the rest of your guys. Pilgrims are incredible geese. If you've never had geese before then they'll spoil you rotten.

I have some information up on Pilgrims and raising goslings here: http://omniskies.com/geese.shtml