Introducing my new employees

I just couldn't resist posting photos of my new employees. We hired them Wednesday evening, and by Thursday morning, they were hard at work cutting grass in our field.
Bella is the older lady in the picture and I will admit (maybe boast even) that we are an Equal Opportunity Employer and the fact that she's got a mild case of Angel Wing is totally fine with me. She was rescued by a lady I met in the past, but she seems to have moved on from the tragic circumstances that led her to me.


Betelgoose is really too young to be hired, but you can see in the next picture that he started cutting the grass before we had even finished the entrance orientation! He/she (it's a bit hard to tell yet) seemed genuinely pleased by the available grass that needed trimming.


Heinrich is the gander and he was very upset when our old goose died a month ago of natural causes. Although he was downcast for a while, he was recently ready to move on and he has totally accepted these new workers and been happy to show them the ropes.

I hope other permies have equal success with integrating new employees to their homesteads and feel free to add your own pictures to this thread.

I thought I'd post a one-week update!

Bella and Beetlegoose have settled in marvelously. After a tiny bit of trouble getting them to go into the goose shelter at bedtime, they've figured out that "bedtime" means they get their ration of chicken pellets, and now they're pretty much putting themselves to bed before I've even got their food out.

Beetlegoose did get him/herself into a spot of trouble for chasing ducklings, but we only let the ducklings and moms out of protective custody when we're in the field, so we're quite sure he'll get the idea soon enough that no one gets hurt.

He does have the cutest way of sitting down on the job. He follows the adults around looking for the tastiest grass and then when he finds some and starts seriously chowing down, all of a sudden he belly-flops down as if eating and standing are just too hard for his little brain to cope with at the same time!

Certainly, the three have formed bonds and seem very happy to be a small flock at this time! I feel like we've been very lucky to get them.

Some baby animals find it's just TOO MUCH WORK to eat!!

Awww!!! We've not added geese. Yet. But, our order is in. More chickens - both male and female, this time - our favorite breed - Buff Orpington, because our first flock are getting older and won't be laying as much (no. We are NOT going to eat those 4 girls, they're our babies, and will simply be retired, and live out the rest of their lives as beloved pets!) But, this time? We're getting turkeys, too! So, as of August 12, our poultry count will be at:
10 Rouen ducks (most will go into the freezer, this fall)
10 Muscovy ducks (most will go in the freezer, this fall)
4 turkeys (2 to raise for next year, 2 to keep us supplied, beyond that)
4 Buff Orpington grandma hens, going into retirement
6 Black Austrolorp laying hens
5 Barred Rock pullets (teenager girl chickens)
2 Barred Rock teenager roos
5 Buff Orp baby girls
2 Buff Orp baby boys
And, John is still ordering some fast growing fryers, that will be ready for the freezer, before Halloween. We only ever wanted maybe half a dozen chickens and half a dozen ducks... I believe they call this "poultry math".

Carla Burke wrote:And, John is still ordering some fast growing fryers, that will be ready for the freezer, before Halloween. We only ever wanted maybe half a dozen chickens and half a dozen ducks... I believe they call this "poultry math".

Oh, I know all about that! We got the geese to protect all the other riff-raff from aerial predators, but sometimes it seems that chickens and ducks multiply like rabbits! We started spring with 11 Muscovy ducks and we currently have 33! That's a *lot* of duck dinner, although I may be able to sell a few females. This is with giving broody Muscovy Khaki eggs to sit on instead of Muscovy in two cases.

Jay Angler wrote:We got the geese to protect all the other riff-raff from aerial predators

This is the reason we have the Black Austrolorps. From the air, they appear as ravens, to the ravens' enemies, the raptors, thus becoming our flock's unwitting protectors.  

I thought I should give everyone a little update. As our beloved Heinrich went into molt this spring, he started looking poorly and in my totally "I'm not a doctor" opinion, he was having TIA's (transient ischemic attacks). He'd get a bit better, have a bad day, start getting better, but each time he'd loose strength and ability and wouldn't regain it. I knew he wasn't well or happy, but there was huge push-back from others against me "helping" him move on to the great grass field in the sky, but finally, after I was ticked with the lot of them, I figured out how I could manage the task independently, humanely and kindly. He passed very gently...

However, death is part of the circle of life. In fact, Beetle turned out to be a boy - a rather bossy boy if I do say so myself. Bella in fact is still young enough to lay eggs. As per my usual approach, I gave some of her eggs to one of my trusted Muscovy ducks who hatched out 2 goslings. Beetle insisted from the get-go that these could not possibly be ducks and at two weeks of age, he and Bella are happy parents and Salty who'd been fostering them seemed happy to let them go.

Just another little update:

We lost one of the goslings in the picture above. It was during one of the bad storms that was unusually late in the season, and the poor thing got chilled. However, one of our other ducks managed to hatch a gosling about 4 weeks ago and it has just fully integrated into the family.

A friend of mine has an idea of how to tell the sex of these sort of geese. She's not sure how well it works on young geese, but if it does, it appears that the older gosling is likely male, so he's temporarily at least, been named Noel - just in case he's Christmas dinner.

I'm even less sure about the younger gosling, so his temporary name is "Bunny". Hubby was *not* impressed!  

I've got two more ducks on goose eggs, so hopefully I'll get some females!

If anyone has a tried and true way to sex geese without messing with their vents (which I'm told is likely to damage the bird), I'm happy to consider trying it!

Soooo... Dragon managed to hatch us two more goslings. She's a first time mom and was pretty great about the "sitting on eggs" part, but is looking a bit less sure about the "oh my god, look what came out" stage.

So here's a picture of her with 2-day olds, in their new shelter with lots of fresh grass:


And here's where those innocent looking fluff balls show their inner nature at a mere 5 days old - OMG next they'll be smoking instead of eating that grass!!

Geese are great additions to a homestead in my opinion. Grazers (and bug eaters) that need (usually) minimal intervention.

I don't know of a way to sex most breeds of geese, but there ARE some breeds (Cotton Patch, Pilgrim and Shetland) that are autosexing based on feather color (ganders mostly white, geese grey with some white feathering, bills on goslings at hatch for these breeds tend to be orange for ganders and dark for geese). My Pilgrims are hardy, predator resistant, and they make good flock guardians for the most part though I haven't had to deal with anything larger than raccoon, foxes, and hawks here yet.

Pilgrims are commercially available, but Shetlands and Cotton Patch aren't that common yet though there are breeders raising them so if you google you should be able to find some. Hope this helps!

I love geese.  They are my favorite homestead fowl, even if the ganders can be a bit of stinkers at times.

We have a pair of Embdens, still young.  I got them from Metzer Farms in California, splitting an order with a friend (they shipped with a cup of hydrating gel fastened to the inside of the box, and made it to Kentucky just fine).  I hadn't realized, but (at least their line of) Embdens can be color-sexed at hatching, and up until they start getting their feathers.  Both genders have big patches of gray down, even though they are pure white at maturity, and the gray is lighter on the males, darker on the females.  If you get some and sex them, you can put leg rings on so you can tell the sexes apart later.  (Metzer shipped these with rubber bands on opposite legs so we could tell the sexes apart, but it would have been easy to tell even without that.)

I may get another pair of Embdens (my favorite breed) next year; we'll see.  We have plenty of grass for them to eat most of the year.  The young pair I have now are living in one of my utility-panel goat pens, 8' X 8', and get moved as needed.  I suspect that will work for them even when they are adults, and will keep my dog from deciding to have a goose snack.  Though maybe she'll grow out of that temptation eventually -- I hope (she's a LGD, and isn't supposed to kill poultry, but apparently they don't rate up there with goats).  

What a wonderful addition to your farm! Geese are just great to have for many reasons. I have raised geese for years, I decided on Chinese Whites since they are such great grazers. Not the best for the oven, but wonderful grazers! Goslings at about eight weeks old are ravenous and eat grasses most of the day. Then they just plop down and nap. I had a kiddie pool for them to swim and they were so amusing! Diving in the pool, swimming around in circles. I bailed the water out and watered my veggies with the water. No waste and fertilizer already added!

When I first got my goslings, I worked at recovering lost or overgrown garden beds. I took the goslings with me in a 5 gallon bucket with a mesh wire top. When I got to my place of work, I let the goslings out to graze. They had a water bowl to play in and stayed close to me. When they got tired, they came over and sat in my lap to take a nap. The people I worked for were enchanted with the goslings and they were welcome where ever I went. I was called the "Goose Lady" when I had geese.

I will say that the geese are the best watchdogs I ever had! No one would get out of their car in my yard! One time I had to rescue my neighbor from the young drakes who had flown over the electric fence! I clipped one of their wings flight feathers and no more flying over the fence!

I did slaughter the male geese since the hatchery made an error and sent me six boys instead of girls. I collected, washed, dried the feathers and used them to fill a cushion for a chair I had reupholstered. I loved that chair!

I was successful setting any kind of eggs under Muscovy ducks. I found some Runner duck eggs, put them under a broody Muscovy along with  some of her own eggs. She happily hatched and raised all the ducklings! She didn't know or care what they were when they hatched! As long as they were hers...and swam in the shallow pools I gave them. I'm certain any Muscovy would set, hatch and raise goose eggs without any problem.

If anyone is thinking of getting ducks, I highly recommend Muscovies. They are the best mothers! They also posses a lot of common sense compared to Peking type. I had a Muscovy drake named Sir Walter Drake. He was so friendly, he would put his head on my knee so I could stroke him. He was a winner!

If you are looking for the best grazing-weed controlling geese, Chinese Whites are better than Embdons for grazing. But there are many kinds of geese to choose from. Chinese Whites lay large eggs, every other day. I blew the eggs out, decorated them and sold them at craft fairs. Paid the grain bill!

Cynda, love your comments about your geese! I've found my Pilgrims to be great grazers and I use them to follow my Shetland sheep through the pasture rotation to reduce parasite loads as the geese will eat bugs/slugs and such along with the grass. I've found Pilgrims to be a good sized breed to work with (12-14 lbs at maturity), with grazing and mothering ability. I have one Pilgrim x Shetland gander who was raised with chickens and stood off raccoons on more than one occasion to protect his chicken buddies over night, which I thought was pretty impressive.

My gaggle graze whenever grass is available, and get hay and grain over the winter. They have access to drinking water in buckets and shelter if they want it, but I typically don't have swimming water for them (though they do use the creek that runs through the property if I let them out to it).  I suspect that foraging/grazing and mothering abilities are dependent to some extent on breed and selective pressures: I chose Pilgrims because they're supposed to be good at both, unlike other breeds, and I've continued to select for those traits. BTW, goose quills were used in Edwardian times for light summer corset boning, which is a rather esoteric and niche use for the larger quills/feathers....

Yes, they are great watchdogs, and they recognize immediately when something is around that doesn't belong, which I consider to be a bonus. About the only downside to them that I've found is their tendency to produce copious amounts of manure EVERYWHERE. Not a problem when they're on pasture, but a bit of a pain if they're hanging out in the driveway.