Our dogs wounded our goose and we had to finish putting her down. very sad for the family but now we need to know what to do. will he be ok with just our interaction or do we get another goose and if so should it be a same age or should we get a baby and raise it sepratly until it is big enough to be with him?
Having just been through this with a neighbors goose, I think your gander would be happier with another goose for companionship. Our neighbors gander lost his mate of 6 years last summer and was miserable. He honked, called, wondered around all hours of the day and night (looking for her??) for weeks until he finally wandered over to our house one day and discovered we had a pond and ducks. He's been "visiting" with us every since. We tried for months, without luck, to locate an adult female for him. Eggs for this breed were easy to come by so I finally ended up purchasing an incubator, some eggs, and hoped for the best. It's been about nine weeks since those eggs hatched and the babies are now living outside with the gander. Besides being a little over protective of the babies, the gander is much happier. When we first started introducing the babies to the adult, he wasn't quite sure what to think of them and kept trying to attack the male gosling. Even though the goslings were only six weeks old at this time, somehow he knew the other two were females and was literally captivated just watching them. After two weeks of letting them interact through fencing we were able to turn the goslings out with all the other waterfowl and everyone is getting along just fine. Now, if I can only figure out how to get the neighbors gander and his new gosling friends out of my pond and back to their own.
Both people and chickens are social animals. Ideally, when we have a partner, it's for life. For numerous reasons, people don't have lifelong mates, and want another. I think that you gander would be happier if he had another mate. Suzy
I just gave a goose to a lady who's gander had lost his mate too. She said he had stopped bathing and eating and just sat around looking depressed. Once she introduced my goose to him he went and jumped in the pool and took a bath!
