Trouble brewing in the farm yard! Plz help me!!!

jtn42248 said:

If a child gets indignant and noisy when they don't get their way do you let them continue to terrorize the household? I say, put your geese in their own area fenced and secure for them and the other birds. If they are at this level of aggression when other birds are around a gosling probably is not the answer unless you want to see them kill the baby. Letting the rooster at them might have ended in the rooster being seriously injured. Geese are larger and stronger and can do pretty serious injury with their bills. You may want to go ahead and have them for dinner and give up on the whole goose thing.

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jtn, they´re highly unlikely to kill goslings, but the aggression toward other birds won´t likely improve either.
Mine will grab a chicken or duck tail at feed-time, for example, but soon let go again, and have never hurt any chickens or ducks. But then they´re Pilgrims, very mild.
If someone really loves their geese and wants to keep them, there´s always a way to be found, but sometimes it´s just easier for others to give up on the idea, as you said. And devella didn´t actually go out to get them, they were given to them. I´m enchanted with my geese, but not everyone feels the same way, eh? Each to his own, as they say.

I hope that I didn't offend anyone here, I have to say that we are all here for a purpose. As our animals are; everyone has a role. Our dogs watched over the geese, the geese watch the ducks, the poultry in turn feed us, they work for us, eating bugs, slugs, they give us amusement. We in turn care and feed them, we help them when they are sick or need something. As much as I would like the world to be a place of blue skies, fresh air and everyone is just happy, that is not the way it is I love my birds, I have hand raised them all. I have spent time training my dogs that its their job to keep my birds safe, they keep raccoons, possums, rats moles, gophers (I think the last two are like chasing rabbits!) away from my birds. At times they will even chase away other wild birds like Mallards, & Canadian geese. The geese watched over the ducks and chickens, and they gives eggs to eat, as the chickens do. Everyone here has a job. Again, I don't mean to upset the balance here, or offend anyone. Eating or processing the birds once they no longer perform their duties is a way of life here on our little piece of the pie.
I turned to this site because I thought there may have been another way to correct/intervene/teach or train (last ditch effort) before we process Lucy & Goosie.

devella said:

I hope that I didn't offend anyone here, I have to say that we are all here for a purpose. As our animals are; everyone has a role. Our dogs watched over the geese, the geese watch the ducks, the poultry in turn feed us, they work for us, eating bugs, slugs, they give us amusement. We in turn care and feed them, we help them when they are sick or need something. As much as I would like the world to be a place of blue skies, fresh air and everyone is just happy, that is not the way it is I love my birds, I have hand raised them all. I have spent time training my dogs that its their job to keep my birds safe, they keep raccoons, possums, rats moles, gophers (I think the last two are like chasing rabbits!) away from my birds. At times they will even chase away other wild birds like Mallards, & Canadian geese. The geese watched over the ducks and chickens, and they gives eggs to eat, as the chickens do. Everyone here has a job. Again, I don't mean to upset the balance here, or offend anyone. Eating or processing the birds once they no longer perform their duties is a way of life here on our little piece of the pie.
I turned to this site because I thought there may have been another way to correct/intervene/teach or train (last ditch effort) before we process Lucy & Goosie.

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While I have a different model working on our farm I can fully understand and support yours. Like you everyone here on our farm has a "job" and so far they have done it well. I have three Toulouse geese that I got when they were 4 weeks old and while they did not imprint on me as goslings they certainly have imprinted on me now for some reason. They follow me around like little puppy dogs when I am out there with them. For almost 5 months now they have shared free range with 25 chickens and six ducks. At night they share a separate space in a two stall barn with the ducks. Only in the last week have they begun to show aggression toward the ducks and chickens at such a level that I have just finished building them their own coop and enclosed run with access to two acres of free range that they will not have to share with anyone except wild birds and cotton tail rabbits (and assorted critters that we discourage the company of). My hens will, I hope, begin producing between 1 and 2 dozen eggs a day soon...that is their job. The rooster, while originally a mistake, does his job by protecting the hens and alerting us of any goings on that should not be (like a raccoon recently trying to hide inside the coop during the day for a massive dinner later in the evening...he now resides in raccoon heaven). The ducks will soon begin to lay eggs and hopefully produce ducklings for sale...that is there job. The geese will, next season, produce eggs and offspring for sale and currently do a really good job alerting us of anything out of the ordinary on the farm. When I say us they actually alert our 8 dogs who do their job by protecting, patrolling and marking the farm to discourage unwanted critters. At the end, when everyone is to old to do their job anymore they will move into retirement for the remaining years of their lives. While we enjoy fried chicken and roast duck and roast goose we purchase those from a neighbor farm (I know it is silly) because we have a no kill (unless required) policy here on our farm. That is just us and the way we do things.

When I wrote before I was intending to indicate that making changes to accommodate the issues at hand might be more in line than giving up on the geese all together. I apologize if I came across a bit curt. That was not my intention. I am a little stressed today as I had to put down one of my hens that had a seriously prolapsed vent and, even though I knew I would have to do this at some point in the future, I did not think I would have to do it after only 17 weeks.

Good luck with your geese. I am sure that what ever you decide in the end will be the right decision to fit into your life and farm. You are at the right place to get really great information. I had no idea what I was doing 20 odd weeks ago and just about everything I know about keeping my poultry I have learned here and through hard experience.

Thank You! I am sorry to hear of your hen, I will think of you often today and give thanks that I am not at that crossroad. I am going to go with a encloser for my two geese, we enjoy them immensely, and they give us great fertilizer as well as wonderful eggs!

devella said:

Thank You! I am sorry to hear of your hen, I will think of you often today and give thanks that I am not at that crossroad. I am going to go with a encloser for my two geese, we enjoy them immensely, and they give us great fertilizer as well as wonderful eggs!

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Well, you found the way around it! I also like mine because they help keep the grass short! Oh, and often when we go out I put everything away in their runs and leave the geese out free to keep any possible 'visitors' at bay...just in case.....I reckon anyone would twice on seeing a couple of chinese in the yard!!

devella said:

I hope that I didn't offend anyone here, I have to say that we are all here for a purpose. As our animals are; everyone has a role. Our dogs watched over the geese, the geese watch the ducks, the poultry in turn feed us, they work for us, eating bugs, slugs, they give us amusement. We in turn care and feed them, we help them when they are sick or need something. As much as I would like the world to be a place of blue skies, fresh air and everyone is just happy, that is not the way it is I love my birds, I have hand raised them all. I have spent time training my dogs that its their job to keep my birds safe, they keep raccoons, possums, rats moles, gophers (I think the last two are like chasing rabbits!) away from my birds. At times they will even chase away other wild birds like Mallards, & Canadian geese. The geese watched over the ducks and chickens, and they gives eggs to eat, as the chickens do. Everyone here has a job. Again, I don't mean to upset the balance here, or offend anyone. Eating or processing the birds once they no longer perform their duties is a way of life here on our little piece of the pie.
I turned to this site because I thought there may have been another way to correct/intervene/teach or train (last ditch effort) before we process Lucy & Goosie.

Click to expand...

It´s unlikely you´ll offend anyone on here about eating your birds, most of the folks on here do, or at least know that it´s a normal thing to do.
Sounds like you have it sorted there pretty well. I remember once I got slayed on one of the duck threads because I said about processing ducks, and someone seemed to imagine that we´d chop them up live into little pieces!! But I think most understand.
There are ways to train geese on behaviour with people, but with other birds it´s a little difficult, as they are just birds, after all. And geese are geese........
At least chinese are good layers, you should get plenty of eggs from them.