A simple idea for paddock shift grazing for geese

I have recently got a small flock of geese and as of right now they are free range during the day and locked up in a permanent pen at night. However, my long term goal is to use them to rotationally graze my "pasture" and food forest areas to promote healthy soil and keep the areas trampled and free of weeds.

I do not have the resources though, to put up multiple paddocks of permanent fencing and for several reasons I'd rather not use portable electric fencing. Therefore my plan is to use cattle panels to make movable pens.

With my idea I take a single cattle panel and use wooden boards screwed together as feet or skids to hold them upright and prevent them from falling over. Then I make 3 more and create a square four sided movable goose pen. It is a fairly small area so I will probably need to move it almost every day but I believe that will give me better results on the pasture and be able to let it rest for much longer periods of time.  When I decide to move them I will probably just let them out to free range for the few minutes it takes me to move the pen possibly keeping them in one area with a fresh bucket of water. Then once I have reset the pen in the new location I will put the water bucket in there and gently corral them in and close it up using carabiners to attach the panels to each other.

I have already built one side of the pen and I will post pictures to show my simple design.

Anyways, I just thought this was a cool and very simple idea that might help others who have a small flock of geese and are interested in rotationally grazing them without having to put up a lot of fencing or deal with an electric fence.

Here it is before I added supports to the "feet".

Here it is with the supports added.

That is an interesting idea, and it seems like it would work ok. Keep us posted. I plan to get some geese one of these days, so I'm curious how this turns out.

One thought is to the shelter. If they are moving around it would be a lot of extra work to bring them back to a permanent building at night each day. Perhaps a movable goose shelter to go inside the pen would be good.

In my experience geese don't actually need shelter in our climate, except possibly some shade on the hottest summer days. My neighbor has geese and he built these pretty big shelters inside their pen to use as shelter during cold, storms, and wind. I have spent a lot of time helping him take care of his geese and not once have I ever seen them use the shelter even during the coldest nastiest weather. The only exception was during the spring when one of the geese decided to build a nest inside and that was during mild spring weather so I know it wasn't to escape bad weather.  In my research I have read differing opinions on this subject with some saying they don't need any and others saying they need to be locked up in an enclosed shelter at night.  Based on my experience I tend to believe that they probably don't need shelter especially for cold conditions.  Geese are native to and well adapted to cold climates, unlike chickens, and in the wild they don't really use any natural shelters. In the summer I think it is probably reasonable to give them some sort of shade such as a tree, wooden shelter or even a large enough shade tarp and also to provide them plenty of fresh water. They are large birds with thick feathers and down and are adapted to swimming in near freezing water so cold air is probably not going to be an issue for them except in the coldest of climates. We are borderline zones 6 and 7 hardiness zones here which if fairly temperate so I just don't think it's necessary here in my opinion. Maybe zones 4, 3 and colder I could probably see how that would probably be necessary.  I appreciate the feedback though and I'm curious what other's thoughts on this question would be.

love the simplicity, well done.

How is the resistance when you drag it? Would it possibly be easier to move if you oriented the skids parallel? Less stable perhaps but stable enough if you still had skids a few feet apart the bracing may be enough to keep it upright in a stiff wind.

Maybe I'm overthinking a simple and elegant solution


Also I noticed that my geese have no trouble going through a cattle panel, do you do anything to reduce opening size or just don't have any issues?

Devon Olsen wrote:How is the resistance when you drag it? Would it possibly be easier to move if you oriented the skids parallel? Less stable perhaps but stable enough if you still had skids a few feet apart the bracing may be enough to keep it upright in a stiff wind.

Maybe I'm overthinking a simple and elegant solution


Also I noticed that my geese have no trouble going through a cattle panel, do you do anything to reduce opening size or just don't have any issues?

I generally don't drag them I pick them up just because it is easier.  I actually built a newer design with my most recent panels I made. These new ones only have one foot (the board of wood touching the ground) in the center of the panel and the foot is about half as long as the ones in the picture. This makes it much lighter and easier to move and is still plenty stable enough to stand upright on it's own. It's still a little awkward to pick up, but as long as you don't have to move them very far then it is sufficiently quick, simple and painless.

I also attached chicken wire to the bottom 3rd of the panel because like you said some geese are small enough to fit through the holes, but the chicken wire fixed that.

Lastly, even though I like my current designs I still think they might be able to be improved upon so that they are even lighter and easier to move. I've been thinking about possibly using metal pipe or some similar material for the feet and the upright post. This is something I am planning on experimenting with in the future though. So if I do try this design out I will update on how it goes as well. Hopefully my answer was helpful.

Here are our most recent designs being used for our new sheep.

Hi Travis!

I’m planning to start incorporating poultry into my food forest too, and am particularly interested in geese for weeding/trampling.

Can you describe what your results have been with that and using these mobile enclosures (vs before when they were roaming freely)? And roughly what your density of geese in an area is, and how often you have to move them?

Another thing I’m curious about is under this type of system, how much feed do you still need to provide vs what they get from forage?

Thank you!
-Bing

Bethel, NY (USA)

Is this sort of a geese tractor?

Use Hog panels instead of Catle panels, the holes in the grid are smaller.
I cut the bottom horizontal and every other bottom vertical off creating a spiked bottom then heavy duty tie wrap them together.   So mine are light as can be and fold up for moving.

Alan Fischer wrote:Use Hog panels instead of Catle panels, the holes in the grid are smaller.
I cut the bottom horizontal and every other bottom vertical off creating a spiked bottom then heavy duty tie wrap them together.   So mine are light as can be and fold up for moving.

That sounds like genius! I'm going to try it. I bet it would work for sheep as well, as long as I'm moving them often enough that the sheep don't feel the need to jump out of the paddock.
I prefer to avoid electric, since I have LGDs and I don't want them to get shocked just for doing their jobs.

We also do the hog panels, instead of cattle (spaces are too big) or goat panels (ideal, but exactly 2x the price) for our goats & sheep. But, we use these connectors, because they're fast, create a hinge effect, if you want it, and will last as long as the panels, themselves: https://www.edgewholesaledirect.com/products/spiral-connectors/

oh wow, it gets better and better! Thank you Carla & Alan!