Now back to the geese :)
Lena and Brown Goose having a conversationSo, as it turns out, the Internet is a Liar. In all the research we did about geese, the internet maintained that domestic geese basically are too heavy to fly very far, and therefore only needed a three foot high fence. I don't know about other geese, but White Goose apparently doesn't pay much attention to what the Internet says, as she easily flies right over that fence. Repeatedly. And then honks loudly to be let back in. She's like a cat in goose form, I swear.
Anyway, so we went out and extended the fence to be four feet high, hoping that the added height would keep her in her pen. (As a sidenote: I really don't mind per se when she's out of the pen, all she does is wander around the meadow. But I don't want to chance her getting into the road or being attacked by a predator, so it's for her own safety that we want her in the pen.) We spent two hours making the fence higher, only to finally finish, sit back, and watch her fly right back over it. Brat.
So White Goose got her wings clipped. I had wanted to avoid this, but it turned out to be much less difficult to do than I had thought. Clipping the wings doesn't hurt the bird at all if done correctly, it's basically just like cutting your hair. Except then you can't fly anymore afterwards. We just gently snipped off her ten big flight feathers, which she sat very patiently for, not struggling or stressing at all.
And now she stays nicely in her pen, safe and sound.
Oh, very cool. I've never considering having geese before but now I feel the strange desire to keep one. Haha, you're right, White Goose sound very much like a cat. My cat only goes outside far enough to reach the grass and then promptly sits down to eat it. Lazy bugger.
ReplyDeleteI love your post on your geese. I also live in Evansville now but lived most of my life in Spencer County Indiana, a very rural community. We never had geese, but we had 3 mallard ducks when our children were small. Huey, Dewy & Louise kept us entertained and were a special part of our family as well as the rest of the neighborhood. We bought them at 3 days old in the coldest March in over 100 years. We ended up keeping them in the house in a washing machine box in our walk-in closet for almost a month. Our "kids" imprinted on us and for years our children, our 2 dogs and our 3 mallards would take our daily walk. If your White Goose is anything like our kids were she is as curious as a cat. Whatever we did they always were in the middle of it, whether it was gardening, barbequeing or cleaning out rabbit pens.
ReplyDelete