Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living What breed of goose?

The wife's chickens were wiped out by a coyote last summer and she wants to get more. She insists on free ranging them so predation is likely. I want to add a couple of geese to the mix to at least warn of predators if not protect the chickens. From what I have seen regarding Canada geese, a couple of them can handle pretty much everything up to coyotes without much problem and even a lone coyote thinks twice before tackling a pair.

My problem is I know little of geese and need suggestions on breeds for my purpose. Whether to get a gander or two or stay with all females would be appreciated too. We do not have a water source so the geese would be mostly wandering the yard if that is a factor. I realize geese are grazers so wonder how tough they are on lawns and flower beds. The garden is fenced against rabbits and deer so I am probably good to go there. We have a small hobby farm with the nearest neighbor a few hundred yards away so space isn't a problem.

The wife is not on board with this as she is afraid the geese will be overly aggressive to her and visitors. I would be buying the geese as goslings along with the chicks so feel we can establish an equitable pecking order. Minimum order size appears to be 5 birds which would be the max. At night, I hope the geese can use the same coop as the chickens or I can build a shelter outside the coop entry for he geese to use at night.

So, if anyone can give any suggestions on breeds to look at and any other advice, I would greatly appreciate it. Just don't suggest a pen for the chickens as I lost that battle. Twice.

Geese never seem to actually sleep, my aunt always had several wandering around the farm.
At midnight if you were out, you would find them moving around somewhere.
We didn't have coyotes then, but she never had a problem with foxes or anything else killing them
Not so lucky with ducks, chickens, guineas......pea fowl did ok also.

I grew up hanging around there, even as a small kid the geese never bothered me. Just stay away when they are nesting. They get nasty around their nest. But, that is just a small area and for a short time.


Tom turkeys on the other hand, are nasty, all the time. If you can make them fear you, they leave you alone.
I was pretty big before they quit chasing me around. It took a club and a swing for the fence, I thought the bastard was dead. He hit the ground like a sack, spread his wings and flopped around quivering. Just when I thought I was in big trouble, he started staggering around. After that they avoided me.

First off, I know very little about geese, but what few I've been around, they had a tendency to be aggressive.

Get a donkey or two. Farmers around here put them in with livestock to keep the critters away.

Take a gander, pun intended, at guineafowl. We had some years back, they are like dogs for making a racket when something new comes along.

I remember the guineafowl. They were good for letting you know when something was around but they were always noisey. You had to go and investigate. On the other hand, a friend of mine has a few cattle that he keeps two donkeys with. He's not lost a calf since he got the donkeys.

and unlike dogs, they crap all over every roof on the place....

I decided to get some guineas a few years ago, hoping that they would live up their advertisement as watchdogs. B.S. Yeah, they make a racket, if you have a bunch of them. I started off with 4, then 2 disappeared, and the other 2 became more of a nuisance than anything else. I'm down to one now, and wish he was gone. He stays with the chickens, and while one isn't bad, when I had the others, they crapped on everything, and were bad about flying up on the tractors and trying to roost there.

Don't know much about geese, but neighbor has some, and they run free. However, the coyotes have caught them in the past.

Announcing the arrival of coyotes and defending foul against them are two different things.

A couple of neighbor's had guineas but they fared no better than chickens with less egg production. They also seem to be a noisy bird which might have led to the demise of our chickens as my wife added a rooster to the flock that crowed constantly. For four years we had no coyote issues but a couple weeks afterthat rooster started crowing, they all disappeared.The crapping on everything but the ground is also something they commented on. Most importantly, they are not big enough to defend themselves any better than chickens from smaller predators.

Donkeys are a bit difficult as the chickens roam the yard rather than a pasture. My limited experience with them has them as one Ray as geese potentially can be. I am not worried but my wife would be less happy with them than geese.

We have plenty of wild turkeys around so I would be afraid any domestic birds would join them rather than stick around.

I would get a couple swans if not for bad early experiences with them. I had similar experiences with them as the poster did with a turkey. I thought about geese as several times I have watched Canada geese gang up on coyotes and raccoons and chase them away. That is what I am hoping to find with a domestic breed.

The only good thing about geese is if your wife is a baker. The eggs make stuff better than regular ol' cackleberries. When used in angel food cake, the dang thing will raise and spill all over the oven. And be way more 'fluffier' than a standard model cake has a right to be.....mmmmmmmm

Vicious little bastards, they are. I remember sitting in the car at Louie Veskrana's, waiting for him to come out to hunt pheasants. There was corn scattered around the yard, with white ducks pecking at it between nervous glances all around. The cause for their concern became rapidly apparent as some guineas came strutting around the corner of a building, wearing their gang colors and slapping one another on the back. When they spotted the ducks, all hell broke loose. The guineas charged, and the ducks attempted a rather disorganized retreat, amidst much squawking and loss of feathers, some dislodged by the rush to escape, and in at least one case, being pulled out by the head guinea. When calm was restored, the ducks were huddled behind my car, peering around the tires.

We used guineas to take care of a tick problem when we moved here. They were great for that. Foxes ran through all our chickens and many of the guineas but the guineas faired better than the chickens. I don't know about geese vs coyote, but someone mentioned crapping on things and guineas.....if you think guineas leave much stuff behind you'd really better rethink getting geese!!!!

at least the goose poop won't be dribbling off the roof of the house.....

Control of ticks and other insects is a significant reason my wife insists on free ranging chickens. She also much prefers the appearance of the yolks and the taste. I like free range as it means a smaller food bill in the summer.

I am very aware of the amount of droppings left by geese but with 4 dogs stepping around droppings is second nature. That is, if there are any droppings left as the ankle biter thinks bird droppings are a treat.

Unless I hear otherwise, I think I'll go with graylags. The white ones would probably be better but I am not enamoured by their looks. The only white poultry I like are Laghorns and that is due to Foghorn back when I was a kid.

The mother of the fellow that I worked for in high school had geese wandering all over. It always looked like someone had been walking around shooting a grease gun on the ground at random.

If one has the fencing, etc., donkeys are great around calves, sheep, etc.

'Yotes won't bother a donkey, they know the donkey will take it to them and win.

DF

They are nasty critters, for sure.

I don't want any.

DF

A friend raises guineas and loves them. He eats them after skinning and sells the skins to fly tiers. He gets way more than most chickens cost, or are worth.

My father grew up on a farm in Idaho. Everyone lived on the farm. Great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and all of the kids and cousins.

My great grandparents had migrated there from Germany & Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution. My dad tells me stories of all the geese that they kept for meat and eggs. He hated the things. Said that they were mean to children. When he was about 8 years old, he killed one of them that kept biting him. He said that my great grandmother about beat him to death with a switch for killing one of her geese.

Some years later, we had some horse property in northern Utah. My grandmother (my fathers mother) longed for duck and goose eggs. The horse property had a pond on it about 1 acre in size. So, we found ourselves with ducks and geese. Embden, Toulouse, African, Chinese, and Pilgrim. Of all these breeds, I think that the Chinese were probably the best at protection, and maybe the meanest.

But the meanest thing were the 2-3 goats. You had better not turn around or you had a goat ramming you. And I have no idea what breed they were. At the end of the second summer, they became BBQ as no one wanted the things around. Could not sell them, or give them away. No one wanted them.

According to a co-op extension service webpage, here are their thoughts:

Guard Animals
Geese are able to distinguish regular everyday noises from other noises. As such, they are good as watch animals. The Romans used them to detect enemy approaches and found them to be more reliable than human guards. During the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers used flocks of geese to warn of enemy infiltration, with pens of geese encircling entire camps.

The breeds best suited for guard duty are the Tufted Roman, Saddleback Pomeranian, and Chinese. Tufted Roman geese make excellent guard animals. In fact, it was Tufted Roman geese that sounded the alarm when the Gauls tried to invade Rome. Saddleback Pomeranian geese can be very noisy and react to anything out of the ordinary. Chinese geese are alert and vocal, raising the alarm whenever they perceive a threat.

As for ducks, I think that the breeds were Ancona's and Campbell's... although I'm not positive as that's been 35-40 years ago.

Good luck on your choice. And yes, if you don't keep them away from your yard and garden, they'll make a huge mess for you. Eat all of your garden, and leave huge piles of greasy goose scheit everywhere.

I don't know what breed but back when I was a kid the larger cotton plantations would have geese that they would put in the cotton fields to eat the grass. This was after the cotton got big and there was not much grass. They would put a goose in each middle and then go to the other end and turn them around when they got there. This was before chemical weed and grass killers. We were too small and too poor to have geese. Us kids walked the rows with hoes. miles