New Lone Gosling Questions

[L0rraine]

Im new to geese and this is my first hatch. The mom seemed to struggle a bit with successful hatching. We ended up with three live goslings, one dead gosling, two partly hatched but dead in smashed eggs and one newly hatched and for all purposes cold wet and dead and shoved out of the nest. When I picked him up, I thought I detected some leg movement, though he still looked pretty dead. I brought him into the house anyway and put towels in the dryer to warm them up and proceeded to rub the body dry - and low and behold faint peeps. Long story short, two days later I have a bouncing thriving gosling. But I don’t have time to be it’s full time mother . I’ve tried to put him in the pen with parents and three siblings. The other goslings will happily interact with him, but the adult geese seem a bit aggressive to him so I didn’t leave him there.
QUESTION!?? - is it cruel for me to steal one of the other goslings from the parents so I can put them in a brooder together and he will have company??

 

[sourland]

Put him in a cage in the pen with the other geese for several days and let the parents have a chance to bond with him. In my experience, geese have been good at fostering.

 

[L0rraine]

Put him in a cage in the pen with the other geese for several days and let the parents have a chance to bond with him. In my experience, geese have been good at fostering.

This is encouraging. I’m concerned about how to keep him warm. I think I could rig up a heat lamp. Otherwise maybe we’ll just try supervised ‘playdates’ off and on during the day and see how things go. I’m mostly worried about him figuring out how to crawl under the momma goose for warmth.

 

[L0rraine]

All is well. With a little encouragement from ‘sourland’ I tried again. ‘Dexter’ peeped like mad while looking for me for about 15 minutes, but the parent geese kept encouraging him and he/she eventually ended up under Momma’s wing with the other goslings after they all ate and drank.