Help needed on advice on giving a goose a pill/tablet

[GEESES Peanut Butter Cup]

How to make sure the goose swallow the pill/tablet without spitting it out while making it safe so that the pill/tablet doesn't accidentally go into the glottis?

We've been having trouble holding the goose still even with three people - the goose always utilizes its long neck to try to circumvent the feeding finger. Even if we successfully make the pill/tablet into his beak, he would wait until we allow his mouth to open again and then spit the pill/tablet out.

We've also tried sneaking the pill/tablet into a small piece of watermelon, but he ate the outer watermelon and then spit out the pill/tablet.

It's an antibiotics, so it's relatively time-sensitive. How can we make him take his medicine?

 

[Goosebaby]

There’s two methods to do this depending on wether or not the goose is coperative, your gander sounds less than coperative so this is how you dose a goose. Only one person can do this.

Corner him, grab him by the face and squat over his back, don’t sit on him, just kneel over enough that you’re using your body to keep him in place.
Put pressure on the corners of his mouth with one hand, he’ll loosen his jaw, open his mouth and wrap your hand around his beak, he can’t bite you, insert the pill down his throat, preferably towards the right side if you can, then close his mouth and hold his beak up for a second to make sure he’s swallowed it.

Follow it up with a treat.

The treat makes sure he swallowed the medicine, but it also trains him that he gets a snack evdry time you do this, he’ll be less resistant after a couple of days. After a while you won’t have to pin him anymore, you can just walk up, open his mouth and give him medicine. He’ll never like doing this, but he’ll learn to accept it as not a big deal.

 

[Goosebaby]

I forgot to mention this before, the faster you do the whole process the easier it is. If you dawdle he’ll struggle more, and it will just be more difficult and probably more traumatizing to both of you.

 

[The goose girl]

When my very pill-suspicious goose needed antibiotics, I cut the pill in four pieces and hid each piece in a little square of white bread - her favorite treat was bread. I actually cut a tiny slit in each bread square so I could completely hide the piece of pill. I would then start by giving her a few pieces of just bread, so she would get excited. Then one piece of pill-bread, one or two pieces of plain bread, and so on. It was a bit of a hassle to keep her equally bread-excited gander from eating her pills - good thing I have two hands - but it totally worked without her getting scared.

 

[JRies]

Last winter the vets sent me home with pills. I took 2 spoons and crushed it to a powder. I used a 1cc syringe and filled it with water. Uses the medicine bottle (without the pills in it) Squired the water in and added the powder. Then sucked the liquid back into the syringe and held the goose and squirted it in. Not sure what your pill looks like or if it will work just what I came up with that worked for me.

 

[Miss Lydia]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-to-give-pills-to-ducks.1246505/

and this https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...dications-to-all-poultry-and-waterfowl.73335/

 

[JRies]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-to-give-pills-to-ducks.1246505/

and this https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...dications-to-all-poultry-and-waterfowl.73335/

I realy want to thank you I learn something new every day. Iv never looked down beyond the teeth. That was absolutely eye opening. I knew April and Andy were not going to except a pill. Silly Vets. But I leared what I did last year was probably th best way to get the pill down,

 

[Miss Lydia]

It’s scary to me to even think about giving meds without info. I never thought I’d be able to even tube feed but I even amazed myself. All it takes is know how and practice. Right?