On a cold day in late March 2013, a small roman tufted gosling arrived at my farm along with an order of bantam chicks. She had a mate, but he died in transit - the fault of the post office leaving them in my mailbox instead of calling upon their arrival, even though they had been warned a week ahead of time that these babies would be coming. Still, she was in good health and very happy to be taken out of the box and placed somewhere warm with food and water.
The bantam chicks were too small for her to live with, as even though roman tufted geese are the smallest breed of domesticated goose, she was still much larger than them and could easily crush them to death accidentally. The plan had been for her and her mate to share a brooder by themselves, but now she had no mate. As a result, she spent most of her time with me, cuddling or chewing on my hair (a habit she still continues to this day). When she had to be in her brooder alone, she had a rubber ducky to cuddle with that she took to immediately.
The little gosling was named Lacie.
She did imprint on me. She followed me around, snuggled with me, etc. But, I had a life. Classes to go to, a job to go to. She obviously couldn't come with me to those things, so she had to be alone. A goose, when allowed to live as it naturally would, would spend 24/7 with its flock. It will eat with them, swim with them, sleep with them, etc. Its flock would never leave it alone to run to the store.
Lacie, of course, got too big to be in the house fairly quickly, so she had to go live in the big brooder in the workshop with the chicks. She did okay, even bonded a little with two of them, but it wasn't the same for her as it would have been had she had another goose friend. The chickens didn't swim with her. They didn't understand her body language or what it meant when she shivered her neck or said something in goose language.
My ducks, they just didn't want anything to do with her. They weren't mean, but she wasn't a duck, they knew she wasn't a duck, she knew she wasn't a duck, so she wasn't a part of the duck flock. And again, they didn't understand each other.
Finally, I was able to find two young female geese for Lacie about two years later. They took to each other in a matter of days and she has never been happier. Those two ended up flying off to join a flock of Canada geese (they were half Canada goose) but I had purchased two more tufted Romans before that happened and they are a tight-knit flock.
Then I see all these posts about people talking about getting just one goose to 'guard' their chickens or ducks and it makes me really sad, because I know from experience that the goose isn't going to be happy, but somehow people don't realize it. They don't stop to think, you know, these are all different species, maybe it's not fair to the goose to ask it to live with another species its whole life. They don't stop to think that they wouldn't like it very much if someone decided to keep them with a group of chimpanzees their whole life to guard them, because, well, close enough, you'll bond to them, right?
And I saw this so many times last year I decided to make the little infographic posted here.
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