The Myth of the 'Guard' Goose and Why You Should Not Get One

The Myth of the 'Guard' Goose and Why You Should Not Get One​

If you browse online, you might come across an article that says you can keep a goose in with your chickens - just one, and it will probably tell you to get a male - and this goose will guard your flock, protecting them from predators and defending them from harm. Maybe you've seen a Youtuber touting that they have a guard goose for their flock, or someone on Facebook has posted about how they bought a single gosling to raise with their chickens and it will grow up and protect them.

You saw these things, and you were intrigued, and decided that maybe this was something you wanted to do with your flock. Maybe you've even already gone ahead and added that single gosling to your chick order, or have a single goose with your chickens right now. Unfortunately, all this is a myth. You should not ever keep a single goose as a 'guard' for your chicken flock. This article will explain why.

Geese Are Prey Animals

The number one reason that you shouldn't try to get a single goose to guard your flock is because it's not even going to work anyway!

You may read about how a single goose in a flock will valiantly defend his chickens from predators. He will not. Geese are prey animals, and they are not stupid. If a predator that is big enough to injure or kill them comes, they are going to choose self-preservation, and they will run.

Now, you might be saying, but what about all those videos you see online of Canada geese attacking humans? They're clearly aggressive and attacking a large predator. Those geese are defending their nests and/or their goslings. They are willing to risk injury to protect their own offspring and defend their own genetic future. It's instinct, like how a beef cow will get aggressive if you try to get her calf.

Your chickens (or ducks, etc) are not your goose's offspring, and the goose knows this. It will not risk its life to defend animals that it has no real reason to defend. You probably wouldn't try to fight a mountain lion to save a random deer it's trying to eat. A goose is not going to try to fight a hawk to save an unrelated chicken, for the same reasons. I have had, on more than one occasion, a hungry migrating hawk kill and proceed to eat a chicken right in front of the geese in the poultry run. The entire flock of geese were in there, and they simply gave the hawk a wide berth until I saw what was going on and chased it off. The weren't going to fight the hawk and risk injury and death to themselves.

Now, geese DO alert when they see danger, if they see it in time. This warning might give your other birds time to run for cover, or alert you that something is going on so you can run outside. If that's what you're looking for, then geese might work for you. Note that this is geese, plural, not goose, singular. Why will be explored in the next section.

You Should Never Keep a Single Goose

Geese are flock animals. They absolutely need to be with at least one other of their kind. But, you might be thinking, my chickens (or ducks, or guineas, etc etc) are a flock. Surely the goose will be fine with just them, right?

Wrong. Geese are their own species. They have their own language. They have behaviors, such as swimming, that chickens don't share. Making a goose live alone with another species of birds is making a goose live with birds that don't share its language or behaviors and that the goose can never fully understand or fit in with.

Would you be happy to live with a group of chimpanzees instead of other humans? Very likely not, and it's the same for the goose. If you already have a single 'guard' goose, or purchased one lone gosling to raise with your chicks, please find them a companion goose as soon as possible.

A Single Male Goose May Injure Your Other Birds

You probably already know about male birds and their drive to mate - how a rooster might strip the feathers from the backs of his hens by mating with them too often if there aren't enough of them. How a male duck that is larger than the female he's trying to breed with might accidentally drown her in the pool.

Well, ganders are no exception. During breeding season, they get hormones that make them want to mate, and make them more aggressive than usual. A lone gander that's been raised with chicks and has no female geese to turn his amorous attentions on may well turn his gaze to the only mating options he can find - your hens. He is likely much larger than them, which alone can cause injury if he tries to climb on them to mate. Ganders also, like male ducks, have a long phallus. Hens are not built to handle mating with anatomy such as that, so even if his sheer size doesn't hurt them, they may receive internal injuries from the penetration. Read this thread to see just what might happen if you keep one male goose with your hens. And this thread. And this thread. Etc.

More Geese Are Better Protection Anyway



So, since we've established that a single goose will not actually attack predators to defend a flock, do geese offer any protection at all?

The answer is yes! Their size might put off smaller predators like birds of prey from attacking, though this is of course not a guarantee. They will alert if they spot danger, giving other birds a chance to run for cover and you to hear the alert and intervene.

That said, more geese do this job better than one anyway! More geese means more large birds to deter small predators, more eyes watching for danger to alert, and more noise when danger is spotted. So more geese are better for protection than one goose. There's no point in getting a single goose because 'a single goose will be a better protector'. Because that's just not true! Every way a goose provides defense from predators is done better with more geese.

Conclusion

So there you have it. The myth of a single goose to guard your flock is just that, a myth. You should never get a single goose, and you should not expect a goose to defend your flock from predators. If you are okay with getting at least two geese, and only want the geese for alerting or deterrent purposes, then adding a couple geese (or more) to your flock might be the right thing for you. But if you want an animal that is going to aggressively defend your flock from predators of all sizes, then what you want is a Livestock Guardian Dog, not a goose.

For further reading on this topic, you can check out threads such as this one, this one, this one, and many more in the Geese section of BYC.