Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations geese

Today, I saw 5 different flights heading North. This is a harbinger of Spring.

My place was covered with Robins when I took my 4 mo. old bird dog out this morning. A group of them flushed & she froze!
Yea, I think spring will come early this year.
So much for the GH seeing his shadow.

Mother nature has a way of fooling us -- at least up here in the north. Up here the weather man even knows that. What I have been seeing more than usual of is Sandhill Cranes.

Ric, "the GH seein his shadow"? I thought Condumello whacked him!!!!

Spring is about here alright; 1 Cabin fever about over on the forum (because..) 2 Bob sets the hook on 4 (moderators) to free up his time to be outdoors on ponds & ect.

Saturday, I had 1,000s of Sandhill Cranes fly over my place near Giddings,TX, all heading north. Awsome...and very noisy.

We have 3 white geese domestic I guess. They showed up one day on our pond. Come to find out latter our neighbor had brought them home and put them in their pond. I guess sense our ponds are much bigger they made their way threw the woods to our place by smell I guess. They are now laying on about 20 eggs in our back yard. They think they own the place now. We have been in a draught and the ponds are very low and food is scarce. We made the mistake of buying some feed and put it out in the back yard. Big mistake They now peck on the windows and have torn several screens off. My cow dogs are scared of them. They are always playing cat and mouse. If the two dogs gang up on one geese they run it back to the pond but if one dog goes up against 2 or three the geese the dogs head for the house. It is real funny to watch. They are poobing all over the yard and porches my wife has just about had it. If half of them hatch I don't know what we will do. Hopefully when the ponds fill back up thay will spread out across our property and not stay next to the house so much. I told my wife if they don't behave I'm gonna back the cattle trailor in the back yard and bait it with feed. Then trap them and move them over to our other property were the 5 acre pond is being built. Anyone want a geese?

Why not make it your neighbors problem since they are responsible? Sounds to me like the only solution will be bird shot coming out of the barrel of shotgun at very high velocity.

That's not fair, Cecil. Trespassing domestic geese make great early season warm-up targerts for varmint rifles.

I suppose you should give your neighbor a chance to get them back first. :rolleyes:

rockytopper: if you think 3 geese are trouble, think about what 23 geese will do. If you shake the eggs, it will kill the embryos inside. The geese will continue setting the eggs but they will not hatch. If you just destroy the eggs, the geese will renest.

rockytoppy - just think of all of the free fertilizer your pond is now getting.

The neighbors already had their chance to get them back but did not know how to catch them so they gave them to us. Do geese eat water weeds & algee?

We are having deep fried geese and dressing next Thanksgiven.

Depending on the type of domestic goose, they nest continuously thru early fall.

Geese will eat lots of water weeds and FA. The down side to that is the amount of added nutrients that are released back into the pond thru the defecating geese. If your pond has trouble maintaining a good bloom, it may be a good thing.