geese are dying

We've just lost two male geese (one was a white Chinese and the other a mutt). Both were just over a year old and both appeared to be fine the day before we discovered them dead near their sleeping area. We didn't have time to do much more than quickly look over the first one to make sure there was no sign of a predator attack (were trying to cover our open garage roof - had been fixing some leaks - before a rainstorm). I was able to open up the second goose when we discovered it a couple days later (my son remembered feeding it the night before and thinks it was fine earlier that day). It looked like the gall bladder may have burst (liver was tinged green near the gall bladder) and the blood hadn't coagulated yet even though the goose had been dead long enough to be cold. Hours later the blood was still uncoagulated and the body still hadn't become stiff. No predators had touched the other dead goose which we had tossed in a field in our haste to deal with the roof which we also found strange as something would have usually fed upon it the same night we put it there.

Has anyone ever had this happen to their animals? We are anxious to find out the cause as we have several more geese and a number of chickens and muscovy ducks in the same area.

Thank you!

Wow, rough situation. Sorry this is happening.

Not an exact match, but have had a few similar situations.

1) I had ducks who went catatonic and couldnt walk. They seemed disoriented. I found red mushrooms in the vicinity. I treated the ducks who were sick but still alive with activated charcoal water. They recovered.

2) my dog went stiff and was foaming at the mouth and was having seizures. Again treated with activated charcoal. Again, dog survived.

Is it possible your geese got into something poisonous? Any oil stains on floor ? Some animals are attracted to petroleum product smell.

So sad

Is there rat poison where they might get at it?  Neighbors?

Any possibility they drank some antifreeze leaked from a car? My vet said that has a sweet taste to animals & is very toxic to them. It causes severe liver damage.

r ranson wrote:

Is there rat poison where they might get at it?  

I second that question. The lack of blood coagulation is something rat poisons do. Look up warfarin, it's a human med made of the same ingredients as rat poison, it has other names it's marketed under as a medication, see if any of them look familiar.
Other things could also cause the lack of coagulation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticoagulant there's herbs and such listed there, check and see if any of them are possible exposures.

So sad for your loss... I hope you can figure it out.
I think the coagulation thing might be worth looking at hard, as that's a weird symptom.

another vote for rat poison. if you were repairing an open space in your garage, is there any chance there was poison in there, in the attic, in someplace where it could have gotten dragged out of there? I know here rat poison is sold in an intact packet that the rats are supposed to drag back to wherever they want to eat it, you don't scatter it around, and the consequence is that sometimes you find a packet of rat poison in the most unexpected/dangerous places.

When we processed some geese for an event, the blood was clotting before the animal stopped twitching.  It was hard to get it drained in and into the bowl.  So it's really weird that they wouldn't be clotted after a few hours.

Rats might stash the poison in with a cache of grain and the goose wouldn't tell the difference.  It's very sad and thankfully my neighbours don't use poison for rat control.