She is now over seventeen years old. But, the old gray goose is still a fixture on our farm. Here is one from the archives.
She is quite the sight, a twelve-year-old and twenty-pound Pomeranian as Mother Goose to fifteen Saxony ducklings. She is in her element as guardian, head up searching for predators and effectively sending off all challengers.
She is the last of her breed on our farm. The last of what was once a large flock of forty of this impressive, handsome and tasty bird. Even in a large flock she stood out as a big girl. The first season we had her we assumed she was a gander from temperament and bearing. Even when she crowded onto a nest and pushed out other geese we assumed “he” was just helping out, a willing domestic partner, if you will.
When she stayed on the nest and hatched out a dozen or so goslings we realized our error. Her partner, they mate for life, was a beautiful gander and fierce protector of her, the goslings and the farm.
Nothing is more impressive than seeing twenty breeding pairs of geese turn in unison as an act of protecting their babies and charge the UPS man. Flapping wings, honking at decibels so loud it must be heard to be believed, they are an intimidating presence. The UPS man agreed. Agreed that he would remain in the truck and we would come to him if we wanted our package. He was only the latest in a long line of visitors so convinced.
As the years have progressed we gradually sold or ate our remaining flock of Pomeranians (an old German breed). For the last six years only the lone pair remained; the big girl and her man. They had become pets, lawn ornaments, a comfortable and expected presence around the barnyard.
Each January for the past twelve years she laid a clutch of eggs. And as the years progressed and fertility decreased the number of eggs and the viability of the hatch decreased.
Finally, two years ago, the gander disappeared after confronting coyotes invading the farm. I found his remains in the woods a month later. She spent the next few months forlornly honking for her mate. It is not an act of anthropomorphising to say that she was mourning her loss. It was heartbreaking to watch.
For the past two seasons she has continued to lay eggs, not fertile of course, in the barn. We let her set for as long as she will. Usually the dogs will steal the eggs from her so that the last couple of weeks she is sitting on nothing. But she doggedly persists in this act of maternity.
This year during what would have been her last week before a normal hatch we bought ducklings from a nearby farm. Cindy and our farm guest Hannah installed the ducklings in the brooder about twenty feet away from the goose on her nest. The next morning the goose had abandoned her nest and had taken residence in front of the brooder. What a miracle it must have seemed after several fruitless years to wake up and find all of her babies hatched and in a nearby pen!
She did not leave the side of the pen for three weeks. Hissing and flapping her wings at any who came near. Sitting inside one evening a month back we heard her unleashing some Holy Hell out at the brooder. Cindy went out to check and returned moments later to let me know a large black-rat snake was eating a duckling. The goose was frantically trying to get to the snake through the wire of the pen. I dispatched the snake with my 410 and the girl and the flock settled down, albeit a bit deafened.
Cindy turned the ducklings out after three weeks. Since that day the goose never leaves their side, maternally herding them together or away from danger. She is quite the sight with her big frame and all the smaller ducks clustered around her moving across the barnyard or pasture; a mother again, after all these years.
I recall you mentioning this gal’s grieving moments, but am not recalling this whole post. Thanks for thinking to reuse this one. So she was twelve when adopting the ducklings? And 17 now? Still laying? Would she lay longer if you collected the eggs she had laid – as one would for chickens?
We had geese for a time at home. The thought was they’d eat the grass in the strawberry patch – leaving the strawberries alone. They will do that, but they are not so thorough as one might like – and strawberries adorned of goose droppings are difficult to sell. They are very protective of their offspring – as you indicate. But once the little ones were grown ours seemed far less aggressive, almost cowardly in fact.
then the chicken fancier came to play
with his long red beard
and his sister’s weird
she drives a lorry
Can’t wait till our neighbour’s couple get their new goslings (get, as in ‘supplied pre-fabricated to the absent-minded brooder’).
Better the man, Michael, with the long red beard than the man with the red right hand, coming to visit.
Sounds a lot more like Frank Zappa than the above lines of another poet, Ian Anderson 🙂
There is an old breed called Cotton Patch geese in the Deep South, used for similar reasons as your family did in your strawberry patch. From what I’ve read you have to start the goslings out early on the weeds you want them to eat. Otherwise, the cotton or strawberries soon become salad.
I’m not sure she laid any eggs this year. She hasn’t set on them if she did lay any. So, she may finally be past that point.
Lovely story Brian. I had one hen, a Buff Orpington who actually sat on her nest and hatched her eggs. I was worried when the weather turned cold that her chicks would die but no worries. She knew what mothering was about. She would call out and all the chicks would run to her and hide under her out stretched wings. She would settle and cover them for a minute or so to warm them, and then up and away they all went. When she found something edible she would issue a different sound and all the chicks came running, soon following her example that this was something good to eat. Chickens not raised by mother hens don’t learn as much about what to eat. Unfortunately one night a racoon invaded and unlike geese, chickens are not very good at defending their patch. The chicks were all gone the next day and the mother seemed not the least concerned. Another difference between chickens and geese.
Watching this unusual hen from an over-hybridized breed of chickens rear her young taught me something important about farm animals. We may be able to domesticate them but it is much more enjoyable watching them carry out their reproductive instincts as opposed to breeding instincts out of them. We have made many breeds too dumb to survive, another reason it’s important to preserve the heirloom breeds.
cheers,
Jody
Parenting lessons form our livestock? I could think of worse sources.
What a treat to come across this while making my way through an out-of-control inbox. Thank you for reposting–it was new for me. We aren’t keeping any roosters with our laying hens since we don’t need or want chicks to raise, and the roosters we did have one year were pretty annoying to the hens and to us. So our hens don’t have experience raising chicks. They sometimes peck a bit when we reach under them to get eggs, but I figure that’s more about being disturbed while they’re laying than being protective of the eggs. They didn’t seem bothered in the least by the possum that snuck into the coop last week and was cozily munching away on an egg in one of the nesting boxes when Rick went into the coop to do chores.
I’n not sure which would startle me more, Sarah, the possum or the rat snake I felt in place of an egg in a darkened nest.
Ah, Lord, the things you see on a farm. We had hens raising guineas and vice versa, an English bulldog who stole and raised kittens, a Holstein bull calf who came to think he was a lap dog, an Arabian horse that might have been a really good Seeing Eye dog in a previous life and on and on. We also had vicious roosters and an apparently trained assassin gander with an obsessive love for my father and my father’s pickup truck. (Yes, my father took the gander with him in the truck much as normal people would take a dog.) We never thought we were eccentric or different in any way but I think our neighbors might have had a different opinion.
It is endlessly entertaining! Thanks for the comment, Joan.