Snoopy Kim
Chirping
- Mar 20, 2018
- 16
- 6
- 57
Hi there
Forgive me for the long story that follows, but I want to give the full story so you all know what I am talking about.
We started out with six adult geese, unsure of what sex they were.
Last year we hatched three batches of goslings (3, 9 and 4). We never really knew which goose laid them, but weren't really bothered as we had more than enough goslings. All these geese, old and new, managed to mix and mingle ok.
This year we ended up with two batches of 28 and 21 goslings. After selling some and a large number ending up as fox food (not to mention several dog attacks), we have ended up with three very separate groups. The last group has ended up as a group of one as its peers have all been taken by foxes (we actually had two taken on one day). This one is being bullied constantly by the other two groups,so we decided to keep it separate from the others along with another goose from the first batch of this year that was injured by a fox. This last batch were always a lot more timid than the first batch of this year, although we aren't sure why. (We had orders for the last batch to be sold and so we didn't talk to them when we were turning the eggs, like we did with the first batch that we knew we would be keeping, but I don't know if that would have made that much of a difference?)
Although we have tried to sex the two batches from this year, we aren't completely confident that we did it correctly.
My two questions are:
How can we integrate this lone gosling with the others as we don't want it to be on its own as it will definitely be fox food within a couple of days, plus it isn't nice for it to be on its own all the time.
How can we integrate the whole lot so that it becomes one big group? This will help to protect them from the foxes.
I have read similar questions, but the answers indicate that this is only for when there is one gander in a batch of geese. Here we have several ganders, although we aren't quite sure which ones they are. I guess we probably need to do another sexing to see if we can get a more accurate reading to start with.
Forgive me for the long story that follows, but I want to give the full story so you all know what I am talking about.
We started out with six adult geese, unsure of what sex they were.
Last year we hatched three batches of goslings (3, 9 and 4). We never really knew which goose laid them, but weren't really bothered as we had more than enough goslings. All these geese, old and new, managed to mix and mingle ok.
This year we ended up with two batches of 28 and 21 goslings. After selling some and a large number ending up as fox food (not to mention several dog attacks), we have ended up with three very separate groups. The last group has ended up as a group of one as its peers have all been taken by foxes (we actually had two taken on one day). This one is being bullied constantly by the other two groups,so we decided to keep it separate from the others along with another goose from the first batch of this year that was injured by a fox. This last batch were always a lot more timid than the first batch of this year, although we aren't sure why. (We had orders for the last batch to be sold and so we didn't talk to them when we were turning the eggs, like we did with the first batch that we knew we would be keeping, but I don't know if that would have made that much of a difference?)
Although we have tried to sex the two batches from this year, we aren't completely confident that we did it correctly.
My two questions are:
How can we integrate this lone gosling with the others as we don't want it to be on its own as it will definitely be fox food within a couple of days, plus it isn't nice for it to be on its own all the time.
How can we integrate the whole lot so that it becomes one big group? This will help to protect them from the foxes.
I have read similar questions, but the answers indicate that this is only for when there is one gander in a batch of geese. Here we have several ganders, although we aren't quite sure which ones they are. I guess we probably need to do another sexing to see if we can get a more accurate reading to start with.
