What a lovely story, and thank you for updating us. You´re so caring in building her a little place for her to hide.
It still isn´t impossible that goose is a goose, as a couple of females can behave like a true pair, even doing the mating action. Or, of course, a true pair......Goose following behind sounds like it could be a male.
Now, if you do get eggs from them (assuming you know where they´ve nested) you can get the eggs for eating, maybe just leave 2 for her to sit on. Or not. If you can provide a little dog kennel or something filled with grass in a quiet corner, she may even choose to lay in there, then you´ll have control.
As for knocking on the boat at night, you can always train them to knock on something else to get food, and not feed them from the boat...they´re smart and will learn quickly that if they knock on the boat there´s no food, but if they tap on a drum/ca/tin etc on the bank that you´ll feed them in their special place. You can do it by going onto the bank in that special place and get them to tap the THING and immediately give them a little food, then do it again...like training dogs...even pigeons and chickens can be trained like this. They should cotton on, though it could take just a little while for them to un-learn the boat-bashing thing...
Later on you could take the tin away if you wanted, once the attention is diverted.
Looking forward to pics..
It still isn´t impossible that goose is a goose, as a couple of females can behave like a true pair, even doing the mating action. Or, of course, a true pair......Goose following behind sounds like it could be a male.
Now, if you do get eggs from them (assuming you know where they´ve nested) you can get the eggs for eating, maybe just leave 2 for her to sit on. Or not. If you can provide a little dog kennel or something filled with grass in a quiet corner, she may even choose to lay in there, then you´ll have control.
As for knocking on the boat at night, you can always train them to knock on something else to get food, and not feed them from the boat...they´re smart and will learn quickly that if they knock on the boat there´s no food, but if they tap on a drum/ca/tin etc on the bank that you´ll feed them in their special place. You can do it by going onto the bank in that special place and get them to tap the THING and immediately give them a little food, then do it again...like training dogs...even pigeons and chickens can be trained like this. They should cotton on, though it could take just a little while for them to un-learn the boat-bashing thing...
Looking forward to pics..
