Thinking about getting some geese

[mistylady]

I need info on geese please. I want the biggest geese I can get so they won't be easy snacks for hawks. Will geese stay around the yard unfenced? They will have a creek at the bottom of the pasture if they want water. Are geese friendly? I remember being chased by geese when I was kid but I probably deserved it! Will the geese fly away with the wild geese that fly overhead very day? How do geese do in the winter? We get in the negatives here. Do they eat grass? Will they eat my garden?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[NewHopePoultry]

For the most part geese are friendly(unless sitting on eggs)
Geese are good weeders, but usually dont mess with what your growing.
They can live for a long time(30 + years)
They do good in the winter
They cant fly off like wild geese(unless you buy a wild breed)
Toulouse geese get to 20 pounds, same with White Embdens
They usually stay around home with no problems

 

[Laney]

I'll add a caveat to "usually stay around home". Does your neighbor have a pond or water of any kind??? Do you live on a busy street?

I say that because we have 17 acres here, with a 1 acre pond. It's beautiful...trees on two sides of the pond, rushes etc. We feed them cracked corn in the mornings. However, one of our females died...probably eggbound, not sure as they were relatively wild here from the moment the folks who didn't want them dropped them off.

From that moment, the only female left took to leading herself and the two males across the street to one of the neighboring farm ponds. We are rural. As I said, on 17acres, the 55acres next to us is undeveloped, the 22acres behind us is undeveloped, the 15acres on the other side of us is undeveloped. We have 3 neighbors directly across the street, one on 25 acres, and 2 on 2acre lots. However, we lost the female to a car. So now we have just the two males, who definitely stay put here on our property.

You can't predict if they will get to wandering. We have fenced in pasture The goats and chickens are in there. Our Ducks and Geese are at the pond and free to come and go. The pond is about 600 feet from the road so they have to really make up their minds to go out there.

Laney

 

[mistylady]

Thank you!

We have 19 acres and we are surrounded on three sides by 19,000 acres of wildlife preserve. The people across the canyon have a pond. The geese would have to go across the creek to get to it.

Would the geese stay in an open barn in the cold?

 

[fowlmood]

I'm new to geese myself. I have two that I thought were toulouse when I bought them but they are feathering out all white and have blue eyes so I guess they are embdens. They are about a month old and we are having a blast with them. They follow us around better than any dog. They are much friendlier than the ducks are. Mine are staying in a horse stall in the barn and I just let them out a couple times a day to graze. For now they follow people so much I don't know if they will get far enough away to leave. I'm thinking I'll probably put some lower fencing out in the horse pasture to keep them in this summer. Anyway, I would say if you're thinking of geese, go for it. We are really enjoying ours. We can actually pet them too. My ducks wouldn't dream of letting us get that close to them.