Is it safe to assume my goslings will know what plants to avoid?

Denninmi

Songster
10 Years
Jul 26, 2009
1,866
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Will instinct tell them which plants are edible to them and which are poisonous?

When I have them out in the yard, there are a lot of different species of plants, and they seem to want to taste them all. A couple of things they obviously didn't like - dill and oregano were both "spitters" for them.

But, can I be confident that they will know what not to eat just by instinct? Eventually, there will come a point where I can't watch them constantly. I have a big garden, and I do have things like Digitalis, Aconitum, and some others that are definitely quite toxic to humans. Of course, just because something is toxic to humans doesn't mean its toxic to birds. And what about in the fall when mushrooms pop up -- its impossible to even ID many of them!

TIA for any guidance.
 
Geese are notorious for eating just about anything they can so don't assume they won't eat something that's poisonous. I freaked out the first year I had geese because they ate all my hosta's and petunia's. Luckily I looked it up online and those things weren't poisonous. I googlespoisonous plants geese and I found a site that listed all kinds of different things. Sorry I didn't save the site saved but you can try to search to try to see if you can identify things you have that may be poisonous.
 

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