How do you reintroduce a juvenile to its parents?

[Count Von Chickula]

We have a pair of geese the The goose being an American buff and we think the gander is probably a French toulouse or something close (we have found him wandering on a beach in a parking lot along the Mississippi River last year, and it was pretty obvious somebody had dumped him hoping for the better)

Anyway, we didn't realize that our stray goose was a gander until our one goose hatched out two goslins on February 1st (we live in Minnesota, not the best time of year for new hatchlings)



Anyway we didn't know he was a gander at the time and come February 1st our goose hatched

The one Gosling only made it a day or two but the other one has thrived and we've raised him in the house in a cage which he is now outgrown at about 50 days at this point.

He's now getting too big for our porch but it's still a little cold out and he is not quite feathered out yet. A nice days have been trying to reintroduce him to his parents, but so far he will have nothing to do with them although they show great interest in him (or her?).

Any ideas on how I can better get them acquainted? The Gosling obviously is heavily imprinted on me and is very devoted to me, and treats mom and Paul like there's some kind of alien creature he's deathly afraid of. The gander keeps coming over and tries to get as close as he can without the Gosling running away. I find it interesting because neither are goose or gander will let me get more than about 6 ft from them even though the goose we raised from a Gosling almost 8 years now. Anyway, I don't want to traumatize our Gosling but there's a point where he is going to have to live for the time being with his parents sooner or later or until we find a home for one of them.

 

[KathiQuacks]

I imagine geese are similar, so I’ll write about my ducks.

I have a duck who was raised solo and didn’t see another duck until I took her in at 5 months old.

I started by introducing her through a fence. She was very feisty and wanted to fight with the others, meanwhile my other ducks were very kind and left her be. After a few days, I let her be with everyone supervised and separated her again when I couldn’t be there to watch. After 1 week, she was comfortable enough to hang out with the group alone. After 2 weeks, all fighting stopped, and she was able to stay with the group full-time.

Even though she was acclimated, because she was raised alone, it took her 6 weeks total before she truly began behaving like a duck. She still loves me a lot, but I’d say now she loves her ducks more.