I get many questions about where the Canada goose came from that is part of our flock. I thought I would write a blog about it and I can then just refer people here for the whole story.

In the spring of 2016, we had the first Sebastopol geese hatched on the farm. I had decided to let the momma goose hatch them, so I could see how the geese behaved, (breeding and parental geese can be quite mean). I was curious if it would be better to hand raise the goslings, or to let the momma goose raise the babies. And so I let nature takes it’s course. The geese built a large nest in the run of the coop and three momma geese shared the work of sitting on the eggs.

We were so excited when the first two goslings hatched! About 10 days later, another two hatched. It was interesting to the watch the entire flock share the responsibility of raising these babies. The whole flock guarded and protected the young, but there was clearly one momma goose in charge of each set of babies. While those momma geese were off raising the new babies, another momma goose continued to sit on eggs that remained in the nest.

By this time this second pair hatched and left the nest, the goose on the nest had been there for nearly 6 weeks. That was a long time on the nest so I kept a close watch on her and her nest of eggs. Early in the morning, approximately 10 days after the second set hatched, I saw another egg in the nest pip. When I came home from work that night, after dark, I went straight to the nest to check the egg, fully expecting to see another baby. But I was horrified when I approached the nest and saw a lifeless, cold baby lying not only outside the nest, but outside of the coop! I was sure it was dead as I bent down and picked it up. As it scooped it into my hand, it opened an eye and shifted its head ever so slightly. I didn’t know if I should be happy or sad: if it was alive, then it at least had a chance to survive, but to look at this baby and to feel how cold it was, it surely had no real chance to survive, and now I would have to watch it die. I brought it in and stuck it in the incubator where it would be warm and safe.

I checked it often over the next few hours and it continued to hang on. I finally went to bed, fully expecting it to pass by the morning. But, to my surprise, when I checked the next morning, it was still alive. I decided to take it out of the incubator and put it in my lap with my heated blanket. I believe an animal needs to feel love and devotion from its mother to find the energy to fight for survival. So I cuddled and loved on this gosling to give it a reason to keep fighting. I named it Wink because it had one eye that was not working and looked as if it was blind. I kept it with me for several hours and then replaced it to the incubator. This went on all day. Later that night I began to offer it wet food and water and was surprised to see that I it ate. Every day Wink got stronger and stronger. I shared her to my Facebook page and Wink developed quite a following. So many people cheering her on to continue her fight. After 3 days of this, she began to stand up, and started to walk. I moved her out of the incubator and into a brooder.

All while I was treating Wink, the mother goose had continued to sit on the nest. After several more days, I saw another egg pip. I waited for a baby gosling, but all day it did not progress. After what had happened to wink, I was afraid to leave it in the nest and decided to bring it in the incubator. The next morning when there was still no gosling in the incubator and the pipping had not progressed, I decided that it also was not likely to survive. I could not bring myself to just leave it to die, and decided to help it breach the shell. If not done correctly, this would also kill the gosling. I really didn't know what I was doing, but I was sure it was going to die if I did nothing, so I set about the work of helping it. It had been shrink wrapped in the shell, likely due to the momma goose getting off the nest and from me bringing it through the cold to bring it into the incubator. It hatched with my help, but it did not look well, and again, I was sure I had a gosling that I would have to watch die. But each day it hung on, and each day it got stronger.

It did not develop the proper fluff it needed to stay warm. For some reason, the feathers remained sticky and crunchy. On the second or third day I decided to give it warm bath. WOW! That gosling came to life! He loved the bath. He swam and dunk himself and thoroughly enjoyed himself. I had been terrified to give him the bath, so many books tell you to keep these babies out of the water, but he was never going to survive getting out of the incubator if I couldn’t get his fluff to fluff up. I worked to wash his down while he was in the water and got the sticky off. After the bath, I blowed him dry with the hair drier. It worked, he was fluffy fluffy!. He stayed in the incubator a few more hours to be sure he was fine, and then moved to the brooder with Wink. In following the nursery rhyme, I decided to name him Wink.

I continued to share the story on Wink and Blink on my Facebook page. They were a hit and everyday there was one visitor post after another encouraging them. Over the course of the next week or two, they continued to grow and thrive. I let them have more swim time and blow dry time to help them gain strength so they could walk better. They loved both the swim and the blow dry. I of course, was a wreck, trying to balance their need to get stronger, with the risk of letting the goslings get cold and possibly sick. But is seemed like the right thing to do so I persevered.

When Wink was about two weeks old, I was contacted by a wildlife rehabilitationist who had been told the story of Wink and Blink by a friend. She told me that she had been given a Canada gosling by a child who had found it in a nearby community. She had had it for about two weeks and figured that it was probably three weeks old. She asked me if I would be willing to raise it with Wink and Blink. I hesitated to take on a wild gosling because Wink and Blink were imprinted on me now, and my goal at that point was to continue the process of imprinting. If I was going to raise a canada gosling with them, he would surely be part of this process and that was not in his best interest in getting himreleased back to the wild. I wanted to be very clear about what her goals were for this gosling. If it was to return to the wild, then how was it going to help to raise this gosling with others that were imprinted on humans? She told me that it would be best for this gosling to return to the wild, but that was already unlikely because it was already imprinted on humans as it had been with them for so long, from such a young age, and without any other geese around. It set my mind at ease; I couldn’t lessen his chances of going into the wild, because they were already very low. She went on to say, that if he were raised with other geese, that perhaps he would learn “geese things’, but that if she continued to raise this gosling, he would not be around other geese, and without a Doubt, he would never return to the wild. She convinced me that if I took him in, it would give him his best chance at returning to the wild, however slim it might be. I live a very short distance (less than a quarter mile) from a large pond that is frequented by Canada geese every spring. Our thought was that maybe he would hear them and investigate and migrate with them. There was, of course, the fear that he would not be appropriately fearful of humans, but without coming to live here, he would likely never know other geese.

And so it came to be. I had Wink and Blink…. I was destined to have Nod. The rehabber met me after work one day and handed this little grey gosling over to me with a big bag of dandelions that she had picked for him. I brought him home to Wink and Blink who excitedly welcomed a new goose into their flock.

Nod immediately stole the Facebook and Instagram show with his funny antics and overflowing personality. He loved his bath tub time with Wink and Blink and was first in line for the blow dryer. I worried about how much he enjoyed his human life, but he was clearly a happy goose and in the end, that is what everyone wanted for him. Though he enjoyed his life with his human, he was clearly more bonded with his gosling friends than with his humans. He maintained a greater distance from me than Wink and Blink did and I did not make attempts to encourage affectionate contact with me. I did not want him to be overly bonded with me in the event that he might some day leave to be a wild goose. We did not try to hold him and for the most part, allowed him as much distance as we could in spite of working hard to keep Wink and Blink imprinted. With this independence, we thought perhaps he would eventually leave us. Our goal for Nod was that he would do what he wanted….. he would stay and be welcome here his whole life, or he would leave whenever he wanted and never look back.

Nod remained with the orphans in the house until they were feathered. They had a pen outside where they would go on warm days and then in the house at night. Once it was plenty warm and they had feathers, they stayed in the pen permanently. I still remember their first night in the pen like it was yesterday. After a week in their pen, they were let out to free range every day.

Nod was trying to learn to fly. He would take off for short little bursts four or five feet off the ground, for a distance of 20 or 30 feet. It was adorable to watch how he ttried to encourage Wink and Blink to join him, not understanding that they could not fly. He worked on his flying diligently throughout the day, and always inviting them to join him. Because Nod never had other geese to teach him to fly, he has never gotten much better at it. He flies up to distances of 40 feet and gets about 10 feet off the ground, but never does much more than that. He is happy to walk about most of the time and tries his wing at flying only rarely now.

He has stayed here through the winter and is approaching his first birthday now. In late fall last year, I integrated the orphans in with the main flock. It would be too hard to manage them in their pen over the winter and I did not have adequate housing for them. It was rough on everyone for the first three days, but then all was well and they functioned as a unified flock and Nod did not stand out as different. He was a goose, nothing more and nothing less. They free ranged every day throughout the summer fall and winter. Nod was free to leave if nature called on him to do so. The entire flock was all locked up at night to keep them safe from predators.

I expected that the next spring I would see him either mating or laying an egg, but there was none of that. Wink turned out to be a girl and Blink a boy, which I had suspected from the time they hatched, but Nod’s identity remained a mystery. Wink sat on a nest her first spring, but Nod showed no interest in that. We were feeling more confident that Nod was a male.

Near the start of summer after Nod's first birthday. She took flight for the first time - and flew right off the farm. It was both a happy and sad moment. We kept watch for his return - but after three days, we began to feel certain he was gone for good. Then late in the afternoon of the fourth day, while I was out doing chores, Nod came walking up the driveway. He looked tired and had an injured wing. He seemed happy to be home and he was welcomed back by the flock without issue. He was not seen to fly again after that.

Life continued as normal here - no babies were born that year and we waited for the next spring. Once again, geese paired off and began breeding - But Nod showed no interest. She would come and go from the flock. Sometimes hanging with the humans and sometimes with the geese. She began spending more time near the hose and seemed to loose interest in the flock, and the flock was busy sitting on their eggs. Nod surprised us early one day in April, by laying an egg in the planter next to the kitchen door.... and there she sits today. She is likely sitting on sterile eggs and was given duck eggs that we thought were fertile, but now suspect they are not viable either. So we wait, as not stays on her nest and waits till the time is right to abandon the nest when she has decoded that the eggs won't hatch.

We have a Soap we have made in Nod’s honor. You can see that here on YouTube https://youtu.be/z69qa-Kah2w

How a Canada Goose came to Live at Table Rock Dairy