New to goslings and chicken

Ewehnes

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Hi, my name is Emily.👋 I am about a week shy of 26 yrs old🎂. I live on a farm in Nebraska 🌽with my Husband who is a crop farmer and two children 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦. My husband had some chickens (rhode Island reds) when I 1st moved in with him and they stopped laying about 6 months after I moved in so we butchered them. Last week (May 1st ) we purchased 10 chickens who are around 5 1/2 months old, believed to be just barnyard mixes
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. Last Wednesday we added six goslings
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and 5 RIR chicks
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:jumpy and yesterday we added a Barred Rock Roo
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thats just under a year old. So long story short, we went from 0 birds to 22 in about a weeks time🤣 . We have a nice sized chicken coop that my husband and son built, metal frame with attached yard. We had been letting the 10 mixed chickens roam during the day, but as of yesterday our new roo we brought home is a wanderer so thinking of keeping them in the coop and fenced in area for a few days till they all get better acquainted. We got the roo due to next spring or after we may like to add some more chickens to our coop, but I am quite nervous as I have never dealt with a rooster before and have heard horror stories. My husband had a RIR rooster before I moved in and it didn't last long as he was very aggressive towards people. Any advice would be VERY much appreciated. As for our sweet goslings, they will be pets/weeders at this point. They are the sweetest little bunch! Never knew anyone with Geese before, but when we picked up our 10 chickens the farmer had 2 Embden's wondering around and we couldn't help ourselves after that haha. Our gaggle consists of 3 Embdens
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(presumed to be gander based on color) and 3 African's
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of unknown genders. I don't have Facebook so I did some googling and found BackYard chickens and loved reading the post. I am excited to learn even more about our new backyard family and maybe be able to help others along the way. Our family also has a 2 year old Saint Bernard 🐶 name Sulley
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(Monster's Inc) and he has also taken a liking to our goslings and chickens.
 
Hello, Emily, and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.
That's great that Sulley is so fond of the poultry! He'll be a great LGD.
As for the cockerel... how to deal with him is a thread of it's own! Hopefully he will be non-human aggressive and good with the ladies when they come of age. I would keep him away from them until they are squatting for him.
 
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Hello, Emily, and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.
That's great that Sulley is so fond of the poultry! He'll be a great LGD.
As for the cockerel... how to deal with him is a thread of it's own! Hopefully he will be non-human aggressive and good with the ladies when they come of age. I would keep him away from them until they are squatting for him.
Yikes, I put him in with them yesterday evening? I've checked on them and few times today and there doesn't seem to be any issues? Should I try to remove him or just observe?
 
Yikes, I put him in with them yesterday evening? I've checked on them and few times today and there doesn't seem to be any issues? Should I try to remove him or just observe?
If he's leaving them alone, he can stay. In several weeks when they approach point of lay, he'll start mounting them before they are ready and there will be feather pulling and screaming. If it gets out of hand, have a place ready to move him to.
 

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