Umm, I'm not sure whats going on here?!

[TennesseeTruly]

I'm new to geese but wanted to throw my experience in here. I have 4 geese, Sebastopols. The youngest is our Peter at approximately 8 -9 months old. The females are all his age to 1+ years old. There's an old wood dog house in the goose run that DH left there because its entirely too heavy to move.

Over the last 2 weeks, the oldest 2 females have been scouting out the dog house. DH put some hay in there for them and they've made nests. No eggs but from everything I've read here and other places they're showing all signs of nesting behavior.

Of course Peter's only 8-9 months old so we won't be having any fertile eggs anyway. It is interesting to watch the behavior though.

Laurie

 

[ironjerry]

I just came on line to ask about my geese laying and breeding. I have a mother and two of her babies from Sprring. Thought I had 3 hens but the youngest is mounting the other two in the stream daily. They are laying egss in the barn where the mother laid last Spring.I am in Ohio and the weather is about 35-40 degrees at night with frost on the cars in the am. The geese go in the barn at night and there is a light in the chicken coop. My geese are chinese and the mother last Spring was less than a year old when she laid the fertile eggs. I lost my original male to a dog. IS THIS NORMAL?

 

[Cottage Rose]

I talked with Dave Holderread recently and he said fall breeding/egg laying
would be due to unseasonable warm weather, exposure to light
or something hormonal in the feed.
The vast majority of commercial feeds are now soy based.
Soy has a precursor to estrogen so this could be the cause
with my geese but with it happening to so many people I'm
still scratching my head.

 

[goosedragon]

Quote:
I hope you don't take this as an insult, but soy Is and has been for years a major ingredient in poultry feed. If there is something different in the soy this year this could explain the the wide set fall breeding/egg laying. Birds that get a large amount of their feed requirements by grazing may be starting to eat more commercial feed/soy now. We are in a drought in central NC I don't remember seeing such poor fall grazing as we have this fall. I would expect the soy processors would be aware of any changes in their product since it is so widely used in feed and human food....

 

[Cottage Rose]

Didn't say soy was a new feed ingredient but it wasn't that long ago I could get poultry feed that was meat or fish based. I still can but have to drive a distance to get it and its mash form which I don't like and neither go my geese.

I've been raising geese the same way for the last 5 years and nothing has changed.
My birds are offered feed year round and grass when we have it.
I'm still totally perplexed!
I think the government must of crop dusted us with something weird!

 

[goosedragon]

Quote:
The whole darn country?Maybe geese are all democrats and are being productive for Obama? LOL

 

[Soccer Mom]

I'm missing two of my 10 geese tonight, a male and a female. I'm afraid they have snuck off to hide a nest somewhere on the farm. It's now past sundown and I haven't found their lovenest.

I hope they are okay. The other eight were distressed to go in the coop without them.

 

[Cottage Rose]

Hope you find them before something eats them!

 

[Soccer Mom]

We went back out with flashlights to see if anyone came up after dark, but they didn't. The dogs have all been quiet.

I hope that's a good sign. I'll go hunting them in the morning.

 

[Chickies-duckies-etc]

It would have nothing to do with the egg laying this year, which so far as I know my geese are not laying now. Ganders are fighting though. But the fall of '06, my chinese geese started laying in October. Being new to geese, I put the eggs in the incubator and they hatched. During Oct and Nov of 06 I had a lot of the eggs hatch. But with time the eggs quit hatching although the geese continued to lay on through into the summer of 07. They layed a LOT of eggs that year. All three of the geese.

That batch of goslings were frail, and did not thrive in general. I still have some of them but most are still little and prone to problems. I wish I had known then that the fall hatch goslings are not as healthy. But with those three geese, only the first eggs they lay in a season hatch. After a while, they no longer are fertile. That has been the case other years also.

My geese are in the pasture during the day now and 2 acres is just too much space for me to search for eggs in. I did walk across part of it Sun and did not see any eggs ib that section.