Something rather wonderful has happened: our goslings are now with Tom, Margot and Barbara and are living in our new Stable broody area as one big happy family, We had, as previously mentioned, intended to try to give some (or all!!) of the goslings to our very broody Indian Game chicken but when we went into the stables last night and crouched by her nesting box, we heard the unmistakable sound of three approaching geese. We looked up and peering over the nestboxes were three very interested pairs of eyes. At that time we had just two (male) goslings with us (wanted to test the waters first as it were) and their cheeps, albeit not that loud, had obviously been 'recognised'!!! Well, it took a while to sort and we tried to keep everything as stress free as possible (!!) but having tentatively put the two males on the floor of the stable and seen that they weren't going to be attacked, we then fetched the rest! We had a bit of fun and games getting the goslings to realise who their new mum and dad were (some kept trying to leg it back to Jack) and then we had to move ALL of them to a separate brooding stall away from all the other birds BUT current;u, all seems just fine! We did lose a small female overnight sadly, we think she might have been squashed, but the remaining 11 are eating, drinking and poo-ing and are definitely cottoning on to where their warmth now is! And we are definitely getting hissed at if we go too close!!!
We never even thought about doing this as both Margot and Barbara are still laying and have not been 'broody' in the way that chickens can be.....
It's all rather wonderful, another fabulous learning curve and proof that mother nature really does know best!!!