How to train your goose (well gander actually)

[Kimmyh51]

Hi everyone

I have a Gander I rescued as an adult who is pretty well bonded with my large (~150) flock of ducks. So much so he has a duck wife, and the Goose I got him a year after he moved him is still more of a booty call.

Anyway he will sometimes chase of predators like pukeko (swamp hen) and sometimes sort out gang rapist drakes. Other times he will do nothing.

He is normally well behaved around me but during breeding season, particularly if ducklings are present, he will do a lot of screeching, and will try and run at me to peck me from behind. I normally hear him, and turn, point at him, put on my grumpy voice and he will stop in his tracks. If he is close enough I will grab him, hold him down and let him know I am boss and strongest. But after a day or two he will try it again.

I never let any unacceptable behaviour go without consequences. But have no real experience of geese as he is my first ever. So my approach is a combination of experience with dealing with randy drakes, and having owned Rottweilers years ago (basically that any time there is a difference of opinion between you and your dog, it must end with you winning...never by any sort of violence or force, but simply by you repeating a correction or instruction until the dog sees things your way). I have also learnt, or felt instinctively with ducks, that they are VERY different creatures than a dog for example, and learn differently and need to be interacted with differently - there are things I would never do with ducks that I would have considered essential when training a dog, and vice versa. But at the end of the day with both I feel it’s important when your duck (or dog) wants to do something you have decided is not acceptable behaviour, you must spend however long it takes to gently but firmly ensure your duck (or dog) understands that the behaviour will not be tolerated, and that I will always win any debate that is started! If I don’t have the time to repeat a correction as many times as it might take, I prefer to not get into it at all, as I believe it is worse to try and teach an animal you don’t want them to behave a certain way, and give up part way through, (because you were fed up with the exercise or because you had to be elsewhere, or whatever) than it is to leave it and wait till another time when you are free to invest as much time and energy as necessary to ensure they learn their behaviour is unacceptable and that you are always the boss and the winner..

Anyway I have followed my nose as far as Goosey goes, but clearly if a couple of days after me holding him down when he attempts to sneak up on me from behind, I am not doing everything right, and I am hoping someone here can give me some real life practical situation tips to help me establish to Goosey (who I love and treasure, and whose Gander strutting and up-him-self-ness I want to encourage (as a second in command to me)) that I am and always will be, the boss. And hopefully also I still some sort of loyalty and desire to please in him like dogs have to the leader of their pack (if there even is such a concept in the goose world?)

He is very protective of the ducks and has shown some great instincts in terms of protecting the flock and managing the overly aggressive drakes (he would squawk at them and peck them, but only rather gently - just to stop their behaviour, never to hurt them - and as soon as they stopped the behaviour he would leave them be - but they would think twice before doing it again!).

So I think he has a real potential to help manage the flock and sort out a lot of these problems, and I do actually feel like, if we could both get on the same page...that Goosey would probably really enjoy strutting about ‘managing’ everyone as per my wishes, and as mentioned, he has already shown an instinct to do exactly what I would like him to do, just not consistently every time. So I’d like to know if there are some techniques that would help me to train him

I need to be able to:

Firstly show hm I am the boss and ALWAYS will be (not just that I won this time but in his mind it’s worth trying again in a day or two once his ego recovers), but that I am the all time, always boss to where he decides to accept this and not keep testing it (is this possible or is it a gander thing to always try it on?)
And secondly, once/if I establish myself as his leader, what is the best way to show him WHAT I WANT HIM TO DO?
Ie:
- How to show him I want him to chase off pukeko
- How to show him I want him to discipline drakes, and (though it has never been a problem so far and he seems to instinctively know not to harm, but in case that ever changed, how to teach him I want him to stop certain behaviour in ducks but not harm the misbehaving duck


Is the above possible? Can anyone give any practical steps to get from here to there? or recommend any websites?

 

[Goosebaby]

Short answer, no.

You can train geese to do things, they’ll come when called, they learn the meanings of a number of words, and they can perform certain simple tricks.
Geese are more intelligent than ducks, they have a better understanding of cause and effect and higher problem solving skills than ducks from what I’ve seen observing my own geese and ducks, they have a high level of social intelligence and memory too, however their problem solving skills aren’t very high compared to other birds like corvids and parrots, for example my geese can’t figure out how to open a door, “all but one gander actually,” but they do have an understanding that I can and look to me to open that door for them: high social intelligence, low problem solving skills.

However their reasoning isn’t like a human’s or dogs. Dogs like humans can work as a group to attain the same goal, dogs have better problem solving abilities which makes them effective partners because dogs can rationalize that there is meaning and possible reward in performing a certain task they’ve been asked to do.
If you ask a dog to herd sheep into a pen, the dog understands that the goal is to get the sheep into the pen because the master wants it, therefore so do they.

Geese don’t really seem to have the ability to rationalize that what you want is what they want in the same way, so there’s really no way to explain to them not to kill a duck because it would make you sad, all they know is that the duck made them angry and so it must die, how anyone else feels about it does not compute, it was between them and that duck. For the same reason you can’t really teach them to judge situations as you would and react accordingly, you can’t teach them to discipline one duck one way and not another. How they react or don’t depends solely on the emotional and hormonal state of the goose in that moment.

Also no matter what you do you can’t overide the spike in horomones during breeding season, they’re more quick to react and short tempered, geese can’t help it and have no control over it, it’s something that they do that we just have to live with.

One of my ganders “Leo” doesn’t have the best opinion of me, he’s 10 years old and I’ve had him all his life, he has learned to respect my existence to an extent, he gets that I’m the one who fills his bowl but he regards me as a rival and I haven’t been able to change that. I have taught him to stop before an attack though. When he starts to charge me I say NO in a firm voice and point a finger at him, he’s learned that if he doesn’t back off he’ll get picked up, which he hates.
Once an attack has begun though it’s too late, a goose while attacking is in a frenzied state, they aren’t fully in control of themselves or their state of mind at that point and they can’t help it. All you can do is try to detach them from you, pin their wings, pick them up, and carry them a little, that’s the only way I’ve snapped them out of it.
After a day or two it resets, that’s what geese do, they can’t help it, for whatever reason your gander views you as a rival trying to steal his flock from him and he’ll defend his “babies” with everything he has. He sees that as the only reason you’re there, you’re an evil baby stealer during breeding season.

I have ganders that are completly friendly to me, they view me as one of their flock so they don’t see any issue with me being around, it doesn’t mean that I’m immune from attack from them or even from my female geese. With all birds it’s not a question of if you’ll be bitten but when and how often. There are things you can do to minimize the likelyhood of attacks like spending a lot of time with them, paying close attention to their behavior and how they communicate if they’re annoyed with something your doing, and teaching them the meaning of NO, but it doesn’t mean you’ll never be bitten.

The best way to teach a gander to be friendly is by showing them that you’re their friend, teaching dominance like you’ve been doing works well for a gander that views you as a rival like Leo does to me, sometimes you can’t change the way they view you also, but it also reinforces that you’re a rival if you don’t also show him that you’re friendly. If you spend a lot of time with a goose they’re more than likely to see you as a flock member, and if you’re a flock member they’re more likely to want to defend you, not defend the flock from you.

 

[The goose girl]

What Goosebaby says.