Can a goose care for ducklings?

[hayley3]

Or will she hurt them? How to tell? Since she's laying eggs, I thought she might take to them.

The ducklings are a month old.

 

[DiYMama540]

Do you want her to hatch eggs? If you introduce the ducklings to her I would be afraid she would abandon her own nest to care for the babies. They absolutely will bond to any baby birds you introduce. My geese are obsessed with babies! My gander is actually raising a flock of ducklings now

 

[sjango]

In interested in knowing other's experiences. I'll be lurking here, don't mind me.

 

[hayley3]

Do you want her to hatch eggs? If you introduce the ducklings to her I would be afraid she would abandon her own nest to care for the babies. They absolutely will bond to any baby birds you introduce. My geese are obsessed with babies! My gander is actually raising a flock of ducklings now

She doesn't have her own fertilized eggs. That is good to know, that she bond to any baby birds...we may try to see if she will watch them so they can go outside with the big girls during the day.
She has always been obsessed with sitting on a nest so I always assumed she'd be a good mother.

 

[DiYMama540]

Ok, yeah...just collect her eggs daily so she doesn't go broody for no reason. Takes a toll on their health to be sitting for long amounts of time.

Start slowly with supervised visitation and you'll be able to tell fairly quickly if they are safe with her.

 

[hayley3]

I get her eggs daily because otherwise she is mean to the chickens passing by and me too!

 

[hayley3]

So we carried out the ducklings and the goose grabbed her beak, which freaked me out so I separated them.. Now I wonder if I had not been holding them, would she have done that...so I will get brave later and try again.

 

[hayley3]

Try number 2: She just tried to keep them away from the water. One pecked at her and she bit it on the neck but it didn't holler but then she got to doing the "trembling neck behavior" so we separated them.

 

[sjango]

Not quite taking them in as her own. I wonder if she would have hatched them if it would be a different story?

 

[Grace11]

I've had good luck grafting chicks onto a Mama by leaving them in a box over or beside a mama who is still sitting but they aren't hatching, dead or whatever happened. I leave them for at least all nite & part of the morning. If she hinky about you, it probably won't work. When she is muttering to them is your chance, she may mutter in middle of nite, start sliding them under her, 1 by 1, stop, notice if she's upset or responding. If she seems ok, continue, slow & easy. I've had about 75% takers of the chicks. The secret is that the chicks cheep when they are in the airsac, mama talks to them too, they know each other's voices in a short time, before they are even hatched.
I do not know if this would work with differing species. They are so focused at hatchtime on being the epitome of "mother", that they might go with whatever is happening.