Goose Gaggles During Breeding Season

This year I decided not to breed my Pomeranian geese, and purchase eggs to improve my line of geese instead.  Although I am not doing structured breeding, this did not prevent my geese from breeding with a partner of their own choice, and laying eggs, but I kept all the geese in the same pen.  The purchased eggs ended up being a total failure, but giving the geese free choice has given me the opportunity to learn more about goose family structure.  It has been a great experience for me, and will influence how I breed my geese in the future.

Most of the year all my geese free-range together, regardless of their breed. Several months before breeding season begins, I separated them into breeding pairs in individual pens.  This year only my Cotton Patch were separated from the gaggle.  At the beginning of breeding season, I had only one mature male, the gander who was dominate, and he showed interest in all the older females, except the one goose I have had him paired with in the past, as she is always very late to go into season.  Every time any one of the geese would lay an egg, all the geese would gather around and excitedly announce to the world that an egg had arrived.

Louie was the first goose to go broody, and the gander gave up the other ladies to spend time protecting the nest.  The Embden, who is without a partner of her own breed, continued to lay in the communal nest, but was not broody.  

The Embden went broody several days ago, and initially the geese shared the nest, but seemed to have trouble covering all the eggs.  Yesterday, I went out to discover that they had built another nest overnight, and had moved half the eggs to the second nest.  When Ethel, the Embden, took a break from the nest, Louie moved back and forth between the nests, but did not move any eggs.

 

Now that the older geese are on their nests, the younger Buffs have started breeding.  The late season Pomeranian is staying in the company of the Buffs, and still has not started laying.  When the younger geese come into the pen at night they all check the nests.  

Although I have known that all the geese in a gaggle would share the responsibility for raising the goslings, I did not know that they would also share the responsibility for hatching the eggs.  It remains to be seen how this will affect the health of the geese, and rearing of goslings at the end of the season, I am learning what the geese naturally prefer.