can you have two guard geese?

[BrandySC]

I had almost this exact scenario, except my geese were both male. We got one goose (Turbo) to guard our chickens, not realizing he needed company. Three months later we got him a little brother (Wally) and because of minimum orders we got a pair of ducklings. To this day Wally and his duck cousins are inseparable! My plan for Turbo to have company completely backfired because Wally bonded to the ducks he was raised with. (Turbo bonded to me because he was hand-raised in the house. He'll still come hang out inside but treats at bedtime are incentive enough to get him to his pen with his brother.) All have worked out a pecking order by now and the ganders, who did hate each other in the beginning, acclimated to being roommates after a couple nights sharing a pen. We have a turkey, 13 chickens, two ducks and two geese. All range together during the day. Geese and ducks are penned at night and the chickens and turkey share a coop. All get along. They are fed together in the morning, share a kiddie pool. Raising them and socializing them seems to be a lot of the key.

 

[3xhhheather]

Fair question. I'd describe "noodling" as the kind of behavior that involves a goose or gander grabbing another bird's feathers, usually just "mouthing" them with their bills (hmm..."billing" them? ) and pulling on them. Typically, it just results in wet-looking feathers and annoyance, but it can sometimes become too enthusiastic or frequent, and the bird being noodled will lose feathers; I've seen this happen with a gosling and a small chick, where the gosling noodled the chick's growing tailfeathers to the point of feather damage and I had to separate them. The gosling was just being a gosling, but other geese are built to handle this kind of behavior better than chickens.

As you know, geese really do delight in "goosing" other animals, but it's not mean-spirited - it's just their nature. They are much like puppies in their mouthiness.

Yes the nomming! One of my geese looks almost like a sock puppet when she like chomps down on, she doesn't pull or actually lock until she gets real excited (cue neck vibrations) I just wish my duck Olive would find a new girlfriend to flirt with and then she wouldn't look so raggedy.

 

[The Dim Side]

Fair question. I'd describe "noodling" as the kind of behavior that involves a goose or gander grabbing another bird's feathers, usually just "mouthing" them with their bills (hmm..."billing" them? ) and pulling on them. Typically, it just results in wet-looking feathers and annoyance, but it can sometimes become too enthusiastic or frequent, and the bird being noodled will lose feathers; I've seen this happen with a gosling and a small chick, where the gosling noodled the chick's growing tailfeathers to the point of feather damage and I had to separate them. The gosling was just being a gosling, but other geese are built to handle this kind of behavior better than chickens.

As you know, geese really do delight in "goosing" other animals, but it's not mean-spirited - it's just their nature. They are much like puppies in their mouthiness.

Thank you! I've definitely seen this behavior myself, hahaha.