Help! My broody goose is not eating

[LakeGooseBerry]

This is a young goose and this is her first year and first clutch. She is refusing to eat anything including all her favorite foods. She is getting week. Is there anything I can do?

 

[DucksinOR]

How long has she been on her eggs? Normally broody birds come off their nest every or every other day to get food. They will not eat while on their eggs.

 

[buff goose guy]

Well some geese do that, she will evntually get up to eat probably, in the worse case she might not get up and need to be taken to a vet eventually,
the problem is alot of first year eggs aren't going to hatch, so she might get a baby or none and continue to be broody even if the babies died in the egg.

 

[LakeGooseBerry]

Thanks you guys!
She might be doing better than I am with this whole thing. It seems that I worry about her the way she worries about her eggs.

She is getting up once a day...today and yesterday she was up a couple of times (remember her eggs are unfertilized and I took them away) and she drinks and bathes. Usually I feed her poultry food in addition to her grazing. Plus she gets apple and crackers and various other treats that she likes. But since she started setting, at the beginning of this week, she has not been accepting food and I never see her grazing. She is noticeably weaker and a bit unsteady on her feet.
Since I know nothing about this process, this being my first time as well, I was worried that she might get so weak she might not recover so I have taken various foods and offered them to her where she is nesting.
Since panicking earlier today (sorry) she has eaten a little graham cracker and a bit of orange. I think she is doing a bit better. I hope.
She knows what she’s doing it seems, even if I don’t.

 

[buff goose guy]

DONT FEED WATERDOWL CRACKERS or any bread products , it makes them die earlier than their normal life span.

 

[DucksinOR]

As long as she is getting up once a day, she's fine. I have not had experience with broody geese, but you might consider getting her hatching eggs or trying to break her from being broody so she does not starve herself.

 

[Chitigirl]

I replied but couldn't find the response, so I'm posting here too, just in case. Sorry if this is a repeat.

I have had a similar experience, and I know what you mean about missing your goose. We struggled to be patient with her timeline, but I think it was worth it.

Lady Goo Goo laid her first egg on Valentine's day. A couple weeks later she went broody. Eventually she would lay a total of 11 eggs, but without a gander and no hope for goslings, we slyly collected all the eggs sometimes we would replace with ceramic eggs, sometimes not. I let her do her thing for a while and I missed her so much. After a couple months she had lost a lot of weight, was super territorial and grumpy with us. However, she always let my husband and I visit her in the nest. She even seemed relieved for the company and distraction. One day I realized she was filthy and I hadn't seen her bathe. So I cleaned the pool while she watched from the nest. We talked with one another the whole time. Then I put the ducks out of the coop and closed us in. Now it was just her and I, having some alone time. I sat on her empty nest and put her in my lap and started petting and cuddling like I had before the brooding. Soon she got up, but I stayed put, sitting on her nest as a surrogate. She took a full bath, preened properly, and ate a full meal. Then she came back to the nest and took over. We did this for a couple weeks, and sometimes I could coax her out of the coop, but she would become panicked if she moved too far away from the nest. Then one day, she spent most of the day out of the coop while I worked in the garden. I tried a couple times to bring her in the house but she panicked. After a couple weeks of this new dynamic, she asked to go in the house one evening for couch and bedtime cuddles. She's done this a few times now, but still not consistently. However, I'm now able to cuddle her and hold her lots outside. And I feel it's just a matter of time before she's back to being a "normal indoor goose". It has been harder to help her reestablish her relationship with my 13yr old and other regular visitors. She has nipped a couple times, something she didn't do before. But we have consistently helped people learn how to interact with her in this new phase. She's definitly more social than a month ago.

Little by little, I've dismantled the nesting area. I've used all of her nesting straw as bedding in the garden and she doesn't even build a nest anymore (much to my chagrin - now I'll have to tear apart the straw bales myself for the garden).

Last night she went back to the spot her nest used to be and wouldn't come in the house, despite my pleading and cajoling. Being a momma goose when you're a baby must be very confusing and scary. Being a goose's mother is such a sweet and charmed life.

 

[LakeGooseBerry]

This is REALLY hard. On one hand it is kind of nice to not have a stinky poopy goose in my bedroom at night when we are trying to sleep, not to mention the extra room. But I agonize about her being outside by her lonely-self all night. I know she doesn’t have very much in the way of higher thinking but she definitely has an emotional life and geese need companionship.
Some people have encouraged me to get a second goose as company for her. I have been resisting this idea because (1) she will not be the pet I had hoped she would be…and to some extent has been, and (2) I really don’t want to deal with the increased goose poop that would come with another goose.
Have you added another goose for your girl? What do you think about my insane anxiety over this whole silly business??

 

[LakeGooseBerry]

By the way, I meant to ask you in my last reply...you said in your last post that "After a couple months she had lost a lot of weight,...". Did she brood for 2 months?!?!?

 

[Chitigirl]

I know she brooded for 6 weeks for sure. Perhaps it wasn't 8 weeks, but it felt like forever! How did we become so attached to one another?!i did consider the possibility of having to get her a baby if my other attempts to get her off the nest didn't work. I was going to go with a chick though, not a gosling. But I agree with you that it would have permanently changed our friendship had I done that. I'm glad me sitting on her nest did the trick. I hope you try it.

I can relate to the anxiety you feel about being a good friend to your goose. I'm so glad there's someone like me in the world and I hope you find peace really soon.

I too have deliberated about a second goose. But two geese in the bed?!? Certainly there is such a thing as too crazy

On the one hand I do want another goose, but I have a lot of reasons it would be too difficult- I live in a city, on a quarter acre lot, in the desert. And I work full time. After a day at the office I come home to my "urban farm" and work until I cant anymore. Everything green and growing in my yard is from lots of hard work. Adding a second goose would make feed a real challenge. Not to mention the poop. And should I add, the house is always more messy than it should be. Thank goodness I can hire help twice a month. She must think it's weird to clean goose feathers out of my bedroom all the time

I have two ducks that are part of Lady Goo Goo's flock. One I raised as a hatchling, the other I rescued from the animal shelter. They are all super close. And the ducks love us too. But the goose loves to come in the house, and the ducks do not. It causes them zero stress to be separated from one another, so I feel satisfied that she has companionship and also a close relationship with her Human flock. We also have 5 chickens who live in a coop that shares a wall with the goose coop, which is actually just wire fencing.

If I didn't have these constraints I would have more geese (and peacocks, goats, alpacas and quail). But I love my house, my job and my charmed city life.

Somehow I've managed to create the perfect (for me) hybrid city/farm. Part of that has been accepting my circumstances while pushing the limits gently enough to maintain balance.