How to integrate new geese with existing flock?

[m1chelle1]

Hello BYC Fam!
I have two female 6 month old Pilgrims. They had a gander (my beautiful baby boy RIP) but he sacrificed himself to save his girls and is in goose heaven now. The two girls were entirely dependent on his leadership and his protection and are incredibly distressed by his passing. They dont really eat grass on their own anymore, im sure they are depressed from the incident, etc. Long story short....I'm going to pick up two Pilgrim ganders from a lady just south of me in FL, and I actually have the opportunity to pick up a few sebbies, african, and possibly embden, if I can fit them in the truck. We have the acreage and housing for all of them and it is just a good all around opportunity.
My question is this: im more experienced with chickens, and I'm not sure how the new geese should be integrated into the flock? Has anyone had to integrate new adult geese into an existing flock before? We do have chickens, guineas, and a turkey that they would have around the property, but would have their own goose sleeping quarters.
Any advice on how to handle this would be very appreciated.

Thanks muchly!!

M

 

[Goosebaby]

You could set up an extra pen to keep one group seperate for a few days while they get used to the sight and sounds of each other, than let one out at a time with the girls to see how they interact.

 

[Boomerwaffen]

Hello BYC Fam!
I have two female 6 month old Pilgrims. They had a gander (my beautiful baby boy RIP) but he sacrificed himself to save his girls and is in goose heaven now. The two girls were entirely dependent on his leadership and his protection and are incredibly distressed by his passing. They dont really eat grass on their own anymore, im sure they are depressed from the incident, etc. Long story short....I'm going to pick up two Pilgrim ganders from a lady just south of me in FL, and I actually have the opportunity to pick up a few sebbies, african, and possibly embden, if I can fit them in the truck. We have the acreage and housing for all of them and it is just a good all around opportunity.
My question is this: im more experienced with chickens, and I'm not sure how the new geese should be integrated into the flock? Has anyone had to integrate new adult geese into an existing flock before? We do have chickens, guineas, and a turkey that they would have around the property, but would have their own goose sleeping quarters.
Any advice on how to handle this would be very appreciated.

Thanks muchly!!

M

Sorry to hear you lost your gander. Didn’t the girls help? I ask because we have a guard goose named Tony. We hadn’t had geese before and thought he’d make a good guard animal. But we fell in love with him and don’t want to lose him. We are planning on getting him a couple of girls in the spring. But assumed they’d help him. We watched a ton of goose videos and seen both sexes working in concert to drive off things. Also what animal attacked your gander?

As to you post, we have two coops connected by a 30 foot enclosed run. We use one end as a brooder when required. We open the chicken door on it but have the entrance covered with steel hardware cloth. This allows the birds to view each other for as long as we want. We used to use a portable kennel (large) which worked also but it was smaller than the brooder coop obviously. We did that with guineas and it worked. But the guineas were so loud and vicious that we got rid of them. A Chinese family wanted them as they had a very mixed flock. I was open about why we didn’t want them but they didn’t care. It took two weeks with the guineas in the kennel. We have seven month old pullets in the brooder now. Because they’re so small compared to the other birds we may leave them in there another two months. It’s a good sized space but I’m afraid to let them out until they’re bigger.

 

[m1chelle1]

Sorry to hear you lost your gander. Didn’t the girls help? I ask because we have a guard goose named Tony. We hadn’t had geese before and thought he’d make a good guard animal. But we fell in love with him and don’t want to lose him. We are planning on getting him a couple of girls in the spring. But assumed they’d help him. We watched a ton of goose videos and seen both sexes working in concert to drive off things. Also what animal attacked your gander?

As to you post, we have two coops connected by a 30 foot enclosed run. We use one end as a brooder when required. We open the chicken door on it but have the entrance covered with steel hardware cloth. This allows the birds to view each other for as long as we want. We used to use a portable kennel (large) which worked also but it was smaller than the brooder coop obviously. We did that with guineas and it worked. But the guineas were so loud and vicious that we got rid of them. A Chinese family wanted them as they had a very mixed flock. I was open about why we didn’t want them but they didn’t care. It took two weeks with the guineas in the kennel. We have seven month old pullets in the brooder now. Because they’re so small compared to the other birds we may leave them in there another two months. It’s a good sized space but I’m afraid to let them out until they’re bigger.

Tony is beautiful
Since this post, we’ve gotten many more geese, different breeds and genders. We have a total of 11 and 5 of them are male. With our flock, we don’t use them to guard anything, but they do a great job of alerting the rest of our mixed flock (turkey, guinea, chicken, quail, duck) of any thing odd in the area. Our males are honestly the best at it. Some of our girls do try to alert here and there, but they can hardly get a word in with all of the ganders eyes to the sky constantly. Yes, more geese help. My two girls in this post, were both very young and reliant on my gander, this is why they really didn’t help with much. I don’t expect any of my geese to chase off predators, because they are prey animals, and still very susceptible to attack. Their large size makes them more undesirable for smaller predators like raccoon and hawks, etc. I’ve had many hawks make attempts at my geese and give up before actually attacking. I think it’s because of their size and the size of the flock. The more eyes- the better, is what I’ve seen from the smaller flock of three, to now. Some geese are indeed “aggressive” types, some are not. It is HARD to tell if your goose will ever be aggressive enough to attack anything when provoked or threatened. And if they do, they will likely die, like my gander did. They can only do so much.

My boy died defending against dogs. He never had a chance but I hope he put up the fight of his life against them. Miss him every day. He was special.

Geese are truly unique, emotional creatures. They mourn the death of mates and flock mates for a very long time. And they have become our favorite birds on the farm. We plan on hatching out this spring, too