Are chickens good surrogate mothers for goslings?

[FutureMillionaire]

MY geese have terrible record when it comes to parenting. My ducks are close to hundreds while my Geese are still 7 because goslings die.

I consider using ducks a surrogate mothers because I have a good record with ducks but with my Balut experiment, The muscovy mom neglected the Pateros duckling for having a different feather color.

I heard chickens make great moms and even if they are virgins they will get broody if they got isolated on a room of golf or ping pong balls.

So I am considering getting a hen, I am not interested on breeding chickens nor having chicken eggs. I want her to be a foster mom for geese eggs. I heard they make great mothers for all kinds of birds.

 

[gtaus]

I raised some geese from day old chicks. I did not have a surrogate mother for them, and they all seemed to grow up just fine. I don't understand why you would need a surrogate mother unless you are trying to hatch eggs with a broody hen.

 

[DiYMama540]

I don't have any broody breeds of chickens, but my understanding is that Silkies, if they're available to you, make good broodies. There are several other breeds that are prone to be broody, you'll have to search through the forums.

I will say though if you decide to go with chickens, you're going to need more than one. Your waterfowl are likely to pick on a lone chicken quite a bit.

 

[jtn42248]

I don't have an answer. But considering that within a matter of weeks the goslings will be a lot larger than the hen it could be a problem. Also, we had our geese in with our chickens originally and things went fine until the geese got bigger, then they decided they needed to kill the chickens. Lucky for us we saw the behavior coming and had a 3 acre "plot" to move the geese to.

 

[FutureMillionaire]

I raised some geese from day old chicks. I did not have a surrogate mother for them, and they all seemed to grow up just fine. I don't understand why you would need a surrogate mother unless you are trying to hatch eggs with a broody hen.

As much as I want to hand raise

I cant do electric brooders and incubators because my town have rotating blockouts. All of my ducks are mom raised.

I plan to separate the goslings once they have feathers.

 

[Iain Utah]

A cochin may be able to cover two goose eggs, and are definitely good brooders and mothers, but if it were me, I'd invest in a good battery back-up charger for bator.

 

[FutureMillionaire]

What you mentioned is the prize of a car in the Philippines. So mother raised is the only way for me.

 

[gtaus]

I spent a lot of time in the PI back in the late 1980's. I remember the blackouts, and brownouts as a regular thing. Understand that a battery backup for an incubator may be cost prohibitive for you. The good news is that you only need a broody hen to hatch the goslings, and then it's probably already warm enough in the PI that they don't need a mother hen or additional heat after a few days. I remember the weather in the PI as either too hot, or too hot with rain. But I'm from northern Minnesota, so hot and miserable for me is anything above 80F.

You might look into a goose breed that is known to be good mothers just for sitting on eggs of your main flock. I know there are some chicken breeds that are known for being good mothers, and other breeds that are not good mothers.