Taming goslings and making diapers myself

[lina500]

I'd love some advice on how I can start to tame my pair of baby goslings. I'd like them to spend more time with me, but they are pooping everywhere and I can't take it. None of the diaper places ship to Cambodia and even if they did, the mail rarely arrives here. So does anyone have a pattern or suggestions of how I can make a gosling diaper?

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[8GeeseALaying]

I looked up diapers for goslings on here and came across this thread. There are alot of pictures and maybe you can look at them and get an idea on how to make one
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-gosling-duckling-chicken-bantam-diapers-5-25

 

[Miss Lydia]

When any of mine come in for a visit I make sure the paper towels and disinfectant spray is close by. I did use diapers on my drake when he was a duckling but bought them.

 

[The goose girl]

I would not recommend diapering more than one gosling. They poop so much when they're growing, they need their diapers changed constantly. You wouldn't be able to spend much time with them, you'd be changing diapers and cleaning up accidents all the time.

I diapered my first pet gosling from day one, but it took up so much time and effort; it wasn't worth it. My current pet gosling wasn't diapered at all until she was six weeks old. Until then I just used a lot of kitchen towel and wet wipes. I bought a stack of cloth towels and disposable bed mats for when she was on my lap and in my bed. Also, I did a lot of laundry ...

I still mainly used the diapers at night and when travelling. It's so much easier wiping the floor than changing a diaper.

 

[lina500]

Thank you for this advice. I am having a hard time deciding. They just poop SO much that I am keeping them in a cage at night because I can't stand it--it's as often as every 5 or 10 minutes and of course they are on different schedules so it's more like every 2 or 3 minutes!

But I would like to spend more time with them. Do you have any advice on taming them, goose girl?

And thank you for the diaper leads, 8GeeseALaying. I contacted the person who started that thread and she's been very helpful.

 

[The goose girl]

But I would like to spend more time with them. Do you have any advice on taming them, goose girl?

In my experience, imprinting is key. The last two goslings I had were one month old when I got them, and they were not used to having people around, i.e. not imprinted on humans. It took days before they weren't scared of me, even though I spent many hours every day just sitting on the grass with them. Eventually they did start following me around, but they were always very cautious of sudden moves, I could never pet them, and they did not like other people. When they grew up they attacked people they didn't know.

My first two goslings were almost the same age, about three weeks old when I got them, and they were imprinted on humans. They followed me as soon as I got them out of the box and cried if I left them. If they couldn't find me they'd go to my neighbors' porch to hang out with them instead.

Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian ethologist, found that geese imprint very soon after hatching. He found out by accident as he was watching a Greylag gosling hatch. It focused on him and talked to him, he answered back, and from that moment on he was the only parent the gosling would accept. Later he did more experiments, getting goslings to imprint on different objects like baby strollers and rubber boots. He found that imprinting was irreversible, and when the stroller-imprinted Greylags grew up and located themselves in a park, they'd constantly try to "free" passing strollers from the people pushing them. I would have loved to see that!

Obviously, you can't do anything about the imprinting now. What you can do is make sure your goslings never perceive you or other humans as threats, or get nervous or uncomfortable around you, because they may associate those feelings with you. While geese are not great thinkers, they do have excellent memory, and it takes them forever to overcome a bad experience. Which really makes sense for wild geese, although it's somewhat impractical for us when we try to make them trust us.

 

[lina500]

Thanks, that article about imprinting is very interesting! Our goslings are definitely imprinted to humans, however they don't seem to have any particular interest in us.