by Cathy Perrins

Created on: September 12, 2008

We have a large backyard and have had an assortment of various feathered critters out there, mostly hens with the occasional rooster or guinea fowl. We were looking for something to graze and keep the grass short but there isn't enough pasture for a cow, miniature horse (not that we would have had the money to buy one of those anyway) or a goat. We had given up getting anything to eat the grass and had resigned ourselves to always having to mow when someone offered us a pair of adult Pilgrim geese. Apparently, these geese had come with the property they had bought and they weren't the cuddly pets the new owners had hoped they would be. Well, if you have grass you want someone to eat and if someone offers you free geese, what else can you say except "yes, please!" and "thank you very much". So we met our geese as adults and they were not exactly pleased with us putting them in a dog kennel and giving them an hour long car ride.

These are the only geese I've personally met, so I can't really compare them to other breeds of geese. Georgie, the gander or male goose, is white with blue eyes and an orange beak. He is usually the one in front and goes everywhere first. Gracie, the goose ("goose" is the term for the breed as well as for the females of the species), is gray shading to white on her belly with brown eyes, and some white patches around her beak. Pilgrim geese are one of the few species where the males are differently colored than the females so you can tell the genders apart from the moment they hatch. They are also supposed to be a smaller breed of geese not that I've met that many other geese to compare them to. These guys are bigger than chickens but smaller than turkeys, if that tells you anything.

When we got them home, we put them in a small fenced area with a big pan of water, some chicken scratch feed (cracked corn and oats) and a small "house" to live in. The house is actually a Rubbermaid composter with one side taken off, but it makes a nice little goose house not that they actually live in it much. At first they were very aggressive, hissing, putting their wings up, charging at us and trying to scare us away. They were definitely less than pleased with their new home. I would usually carry a stick to fend them off with and this continued on for about a week and a half. They weren't settling into their new home, they were becoming more aggressive if anything. The dogs, we have border collies who usually herd the chickens around the back yard,

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