Gooseberry & Lucy
by Ida Livingston of Davis City, IA
There are some benefits to attending a little country church where everyone knows not only your Sunday face, but also your weekday face. In this comfortable setting, I noticed a lady at church in late Spring holding something in a towel in her lap. Turns out, she brought a rejected and injured gosling in hopes that someone would have the time and interest to care for it.
It was love at first sight. A timid fluff of yellow down with a seriously injured foot sticking out of it. And no one to take care of it. It doesn’t even take that much to make my heart bleed.
Khoke needed no convincing. I knew that he had wanted to get geese for a few years already. It just had not risen to the top of our priority list yet. This was now going on the elevator.
Gooseberry came home with us. He got a lot of lap time since he couldn’t get around well. On top of that, he was an only goose-child. His broken toes and torn webbing never did heal perfectly but it did heal and his mobility improved. That foot was always slightly smaller than the other and the tear did not heal shut.
Lucy
After a couple weeks, Cindy Smith asked us if we happened to be interested in more geese. She didn’t want her flock to grow any more and had been collecting the eggs as they were laid in hopes of preventing goslings. Another hidden nest hatched off anyway. Khoke came home with a goose, goslings and a complementary gander. We sent these out to our fenced orchard pond. Khoke set up some housing for them and a creep-feeder for the goslings.
These geese were rather distrusting of their new steward following their sudden relocation. When Khoke would come to feed them or shut them in at night, the goslings would anxiously crowd under their mother while she was preoccupied with threatening Khoke. Often, this combination got the goslings stepped on.
One morning, Khoke came to the house holding an injured gosling. She had a badly sprained hock joint and could put no weight on that leg. We put Lucy in an outdoor pen with Gooseberry.
Gooseberry was thrilled to have company who knew his language. He was very sweet and comforting to the terrified new gosling. Lucy was just sure that we were out to eat her. Gooseberry was a good example and Lucy soon calmed down. Not only did she calm down, she became quite fond of lap time and was a snuggly baby goose.
Diet
Along with a little high protein grain every day, we also made a point of locating Gooseberry and Lucy’s favorite food: wild lettuce. They were very excited about this. We would harvest a stalk, lay a weight on the stem to secure it and let them strip the leaves. Our former over-abundance of wild lettuce took a sharp decline.
Geese require a minimal amount of grain, very little compared to chickens or turkeys. They mostly graze on grass and other greenery. They trimmed the vegetation around our pond; widening the walkways with shortened grass. Khoke soaked a mixture of oats and cracked corn in water and fed some of this to the geese twice a day.
The pond that the geese were relocated to this year is nearly ringed with cattails. Over the course of 2-3 years, they will get those cattails under control as well as other pond weeds. Cindy had a beautiful pond that was clear of cattails and weeds as the geese kept them in check.
Geese don’t forage for bugs as chickens do, nor do they scratch. Your landscaping should be safe, unless the foliage is tasty. They love the garden more than you do. There is little in it that they won’t eat.
Gooseberry and Lucy spent a lot of time this summer hanging out in my outdoor kitchen soliciting lap time or treats. As they got bigger, they learned how to help themselves to whatever they could reach. I had a bucket mostly full of new potatoes with a few cucumbers on top. Geese have serrated bills that have no trouble turning cucumbers and other vegetables into bite-sized pieces. I came in later to find all the cucumbers gone. They had no interest in the potatoes.
The geese made a complete mess out of a bushel of tomatoes set too low. They loved to “help me” when I was snapping beans. Gooseberry and Lucy went wild over apples. My neighbor Stephanie would sit and slice an apple, giving them a piece at a time. They loved to see her coming and were shameless about asking her to share if she had one.
Watermelon too was a delicacy of few equals. As I stood eating a slice one day, Gooseberry came over and gently tugged at my skirt, tipped his head to the side and in fluent Goose, asked me to share it with him. As I lowered the last crescent of melon down, he discarded his manners, digging into it like a feathered pig; squawking his excitement between mouthfuls of melon.
Guard Goose
Historically, geese have been used as a guard animal. Not for aggression but noise. I had heard of this but didn’t fully understand. A dog can sometimes be befriended or baited into silence with food. A goose, when fed, gets excited and can bugle through their excitement. They also “talk” about everything they see or hear, and everything they think they saw or heard, often quite loudly. So yes, they make an excellent alarm system.
A Feathered Paper Shredder
Hand raising the goslings was akin to getting a puppy. They literally chew (or try to) on everything. Cardboard boxes ended up stripped and shredded. They would chew on bags, clothes and almost anything else they could close their bill onto. Unlike a puppy, I don’t think they actually grow out of it.
Goose Gun
We expanded our home this summer to include a teenage boy named Opiy whom we have since adopted. It did not escape his notice that the growing goslings pooped like clockwork every few minutes. Not only that, it was projectile poop. This was naturally going to become a source of teenage entertainment.
Opiy would gently pick up a now ten pound Lucy or Gooseberry, position them under his arm, tail facing out and ready to fire. Then he would sidle up to someone (usually me), and wait for the “goose gun” to go off. You only had a little warning, they wiggle their tail right before they fire. No one stood around to wait out the roulette, but he got me twice anyway.
Cuddly Goose Children
Everyone wants to hold a golden, downy, baby goose. Even as they grew, they got laptime. Gooseberry, now fully grown, still gets to have his long neck stroked while on our lap.
As the goslings moved out of the yellow down phase and into the partly feathered chapter, we’d seat them on our lap on our outdoor swing, carefully situating them so the tail pointed where they could safely fire green missiles off the lap. Oh how Gooseberry (and Lucy too) loved to have their long necks stroked. Their skin itched as the feathers came in and they loved to be lightly scratched. Often they would ”groom” us too as we stroked them, tugging at our skin and clothing.
As sweet as hand-raised goslings are, the temptation to hold them is ever present for children. But goslings are clumsy, have poor balance, and are easily injured. They gain weight long before their wing feathers have grown enough to break their fall. They are nearly adult-sized before their wings have fully feathered out. This contributes to how easily they are injured when dropped.
Cindy ended up sending Khoke the rest of her flock as a couple more sneaky geese came off with goslings. These were sent to our pond with a makeshift overnight housing until he could build a goose-house. Gooseberry and Lucy never did reintegrate with the flock, though they recognized their own and did hope for a little friendship that never quite happened. However, Gooseberry and Lucy had their own flock that they did identify with – a people flock.
Gooseberry and Lucy were loved and doted on all summer long. The feeling was mutual. When we would come home from a long day gone, we’d call them as we walked in the yard. Gooseberry would bugle and they both came running, flapping their wings as they came. Then when they came within a couple feet of us, they would stop and with great dignity, begin eating grass as though they came over to do just that.
Gooseberry always looked out for, and took care of the slightly younger Lucy. But when we had another injured gosling to care for later that summer, Lucy did not want to share her Gooseberry. When they would settle down for a nap, Lucy would drape her neck over Gooseberry possessively, and not let the other gosling near. This gosling was returned to the flock as soon as it was well enough to walk again.
Goose vs. Chicken (and Cats and Dogs)
After Gooseberry’s foot healed and he could get around well, we had a hatching of chicks wandering around that were nearly the size of Gooseberry, They challenged him on more than one occasion. Gooseberry never hesitated to assert his dominance.
It was Lucy though who really hated chickens. She was smaller than the chicks when she showed up and she was injured on top of that. Gooseberry kept close by and guarded her from the chicks. Once she had healed and grown a little, a bullying half-grown chick came across her napping one day and pecked her. Lucy fairly screamed in rage and jumped up, chasing the chick away. This instilled a deep need within her to bite any chicken within her reach. She has since taken to sneaking up on preoccupied chickens and pinching them at any given opportunity.
As they grew, Gooseberry and Lucy asserted themselves to dominate the cats and dogs, pinching any that did not defer to them. Defer, as in, walk a significant distance away. The dogs do because they know they are to be gentle with all our animals until instructed otherwise. But everyone has their limits. When a nearly grown Gooseberry tried to chase Silas, our Australian Cattledog, from his food, Gooseberry left the incident with a pierced bill.
The real lesson learned came from the setting hens. When my midsummer setters started to come off, some of them hung around the barn but three setters set up camp around my house. Gooseberry and Lucy, out of habit, went to chase away Blackie, a big, slow moving setter who had fluffballs at her feet. Blackie became a being of terror and chased the geese out of the yard, down the hill to the guest house, and had to be pulled off of a sprawled Gooseberry who appeared to believe his end had come.
Gooseberry and Lucy were sufficiently traumatized by the setters. They were not yet full sized and had to be rescued more than once. Dogs, cats and even geese had to give Blackie a wide berth.
Swimming Lessons
We got Gooseberry when he was less than a week old so he had never swam. As time went on and he was introduced to water, he adamantly refused to go in. An embarrassment to his species, he is still this way. He will have to figure something out next year as geese mate in the water.
For fun, Khoke has taken Gooseberry and Lucy with him to the pond for swimming excursions. Since Khoke is not buoyant enough to float, he will wear a life jacket so he doesn’t have to swim continually. Then he puts a basketball under his knees and floats comfortably in a reclining position. When toted to the middle of the pond where they had no choice but to swim, Gooseberry and Lucy loved to use Khoke as a floating dock.
Gooseberry has no trouble swimming, he just seems to not want to. Lucy has no such objections and she loves water; she’ll swim around and dive. But she loves Gooseberry more than the pond, so our yard it is.
Aggression
One of my concerns about having geese was about aggression. When I was a small child we had a goose who pinched me any chance it had. In my teens, we had geese again and this flock had a mean gander that never passed a chance to pinch you a good welt.
My siblings and I would catch him by the neck quickly as he charged, swing him in a circle and let him go. He’d tumble in a most undignified manner while we made our escape. When we missed our catch we wore the welt. We got rid of these geese as they were too aggressive.
The geese we were given by Cindy were Toulouse, known for their docility and they have lived up to it. The only ones to show aggression were those who have young goslings and they try to flog you when you get too close to their young. We have found that we must monitor toddlers around the geese. Gooseberry and Lucy will pinch little people shorter than themselves.
Snapping Turtles and Other Predators
Although geese are a large bird and can be formidable, they are still a prey animal and are given sooner to flight than fight. They are vulnerable to fox, coyote and bobcat. Raccoons are more likely to target goslings than mature geese. A big racoon could technically kill an adult goose, but it might end up being more work than reward. Goslings are definitely the most vulnerable and need all the aggression a mama goose can give to protect them.
A surprisingly serious predator to geese are snapping turtles. They can snag swimming goslings and drown them. Even when they managed to escape drowning, we had a number of large goslings that had the webbing between their toes stripped out by snapping turtle attacks.
Khoke has never been a fan of snapping turtles as he has seen what they can do to wild waterfowl, not to mention stealing fish off his line. But when he started losing goslings and seeing the stripped webbing on the survivors, this became personal.
Catching snapping turtles is not easy. You can sometimes find them in a pasture as they migrate to a new pond. But once in a pond that they are happy with, they rarely come ashore. You can spot them briefly as they stick their nose out of the pond every so many minutes for air. You can also see the surfacing of bubbles as they slowly release the air underwater.
A way to get rid of offending snapping turtles is to shoot them when they surface for air. This is difficult because their head is a small target and only part of it comes out of the water. They are also not up for long. Another way is to wait until winter when the pond is covered with about an inch of ice. When the ice is thin, you can still see through it. The snapping turtles come to the edge as it is slightly warmer where the sun shines through the ice in the shallow water. They also like to submerge in the mud there to hibernate for the winter. Khoke walks the pond edges to spot snapping turtles and will shoot them through the ice when he sees one.
Why So Many?
We ended up with 23 geese total, not counting Gooseberry and Lucy. Most of these will be what begins a much larger flock. Goose is an excellent meat source. With the low grain diet of geese, we are looking into transitioning into goose as our predominant poultry meat. This would cut down on the number of high-grain- diet chickens we would need to raise. Most of our poultry is deboned and ground and when prepared this way, goose is comparable to any other poultry. It is a darker meat but when ground it is hard to tell the difference.
Walking Yard Ornaments
Gooseberry and Lucy are likely going to teach us how old geese get if left to a natural life. They have become mobile yard ornaments that tell on everything that moves. They generously fertilize our yard, walkways and porch. They talk to us as we come and go and have become another one of our favorite eccentricities.
