Goose Adoption goes Horribly Wrong 

BEFORE COMMENTING, PLEASE READ: I know that there will be a lot of people who are mad about some of the things that go down in this video. I get it. I'm mad at myself, too. When I committed to sharing my experience of starting a farm on social media, I knew this would mean that I would need to share both the successes and failures. What happened in this video most definitely represents a failure. I share it in the name of transparency and the hope that others learn from my mistakes. It would feel dishonest not to share what happened. There will probably be a lot of debate whether or not I needed to wait until nightfall vs. do the introduction in the early morning hours as I do here. When it comes to chickens, you should always introduce new young ones at night when they have gone to sleep. When it comes to geese and ducks, the answer is not nearly as conclusive. They don't sleep the same way nor exhibit the same behaviors. In fact, I have found geese to be much more vigilant and aggressive at night when compared to the early morning. Based on the research I did, plus what I have observed with goose behavior here on our farm over the past couple of years, I didn't think the time would matter much. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. I have no way of knowing that with certainty. Ever since this incident happened, I have talked to several goose-owning friends, and they were all very split on the issue. I would be curious to hear the perspective of others who have raised geese and attempted this activity. Now with all that said, please feel free to roast me in the comments section.

I've always appreciated that you are willing to show both successes and failures on the farm. I don't believe life is black and white. I think taking chances and trying out new things is really important to success.

Chicken: What is this, a baby? Mine now. Goose: rrrreeeeEEEEEE--

I thought he was going to put eggs that were close to hatching into the nests, rather than already-hatched goslings! The way he did it, it was too obvious to the goose sitting on her eggs that those goslings were not hers!

Everybody makes mistakes, especially people (like you) who have the balls to step out of their comfort zone and achieve their goals. Stories about success are easy to tell. The fact that you are willing to show us both the good and the bad is refreshing.

"Welcome to the world baby goose" SMACK!

Whew, that was close one for the little yellow puffball. Glad it's doing okay.

Smuggle the developed eggs not the baby gooselings

"Failure is not the opposite of success- it is part of success". 🥰

"The only man who never makes any mistakes is the man who never does anything." T.R. A peace!

I thought you were going to try the almost hatched eggs.

I’ve actually had great success by putting newly hatched goslings right out in the open where adult geese can easily see them, like right near their primary food source. You must A) provide goslings with warmth and food/water and B) keep goslings physically separated from adults with temporary fencing, like poultry netting. Within a few hours, inevitably one or more adult geese refuse to leave the goslings and will set up camp right next to them. By late afternoon, I cautiously pen all of them up TOGETHER. You must still provide babies with warmth as they will not instinctively crawl underneath an adult. But living in Texas, by March or April, this is usually not a major problem. By the following morning, the adoptive parents will protect those babies tooth and claw. Have done this on three or four separate occasions, always with great success. The trick is allowing the entire flock to have an opportunity to adopt. Nesting moms are not receptive without extreme trickery. But other adults (ganders, too!) are quite protective of their own kind.

Tractor Supply are rubbing their hands at this one 😂

LISTEN, you do an AMAZING JOB with your animals Morgan! I know you tend to listen to others more often than you don't. Just keep doing you! You are an awesome, caring individual. Your love for your animals shows and your animal husbandry is on point. Just don't let them get to you. Listen to your heart. ~mushzilla~

I love that you show both your successes and failures. There are a lot of both in homesteading.

I smuggled one little gosling in with my bonded pair. The male wanted a baby so bad that he was following the baby chics around. I pulled the mama out of the nest and put the baby in and they ran to the gosling, immediately accepting her.

I feel like this year was an extraordinarily cold spring that really messed with the goose’s ability to hatch eggs naturally, which might make interpreting your results from this year’s approach kind of hard

Now I finally get why Toby dog looks so "relieved" to see you every morning.. no stinging feeling when marking territory!

Appreciate your honesty and I respect you for it, as well as for all your kindnesses in working to ensure the best life for your animals. Curious for confirmation that the baby gosling with the 2 Mommas was one of their own??? And very glad the gosling recovered!!

woah such bravery on posting this video

"I'll bring you guys along with me for the ride, and see what happens." *Nervously looks at the title.*

The one that stayed in the incubator is probably feeling pretty lucky right now.

Trail and error. Positive self talk is also important as a farmer! You're gonna be okay and your choices have helped you know how to succeed in the future. We love you💗

You were there to pull the plug when needed and we know you care deeply about all the birds and critters on the farm. Looks like that mom knew her babies were about to hatch and there was no room at the Inn.

I appreciate that you showed this and I'm glad the baby is ok.

I thought you were going to put the eggs under her not when they already hatched

Announces he is going to smuggle the chicks under the gooses... Proceeds to bring the box right infront of her and hands the chicks to her... Clearly, he needs to learn how to be a better smuggler

The duck faceplanting on the ramp was a welcome moment of levity in this video. I feel a little bit bad, but I laugh every time they do that.

When the smacked gosling stopped kicking and struggling and just gave up... 😭😭😭 So glad it's okay now.

Admittedly I know nothing about raising geese, but are you letting them have a little too much power over certain aspects of the farm? They seem to be really arrogant creatures, like if you give them an inch they just say "screw you" and take the whole ruler!!

My chickens are accepting of any babies. My hens have hatched a lot of my ducklings and I've had them foster babies too. Nothing wrong with a chicken raising a goose.

Thank you for showing us that ugly part. A lot of people would never show something like that, you made a mistake and learnt from it. Showing this proves how humble and true you are.

Once again, I commend you for being willing to show us everything. Man, it's tough to watch sometimes but it is SO valuable to see the real side instead of the "produced" side. You're saving a whole bunch of other animals the stress and harm by letting a whole new generation of interested farmers learn through your mistakes.

Mistakes are lessons to be learned! I stand by that, you are human and I feel your compassion

my only problem is that instead of allowing yourself to get a bite from the goose you allowed the baby goose to get hit multiple times to the point of it giving up, i understand that mistakes happen and that you couldnt have stopped her from her natural instincts but you shouldve taken a bite on the gloved hand Thank you for keeping it honest and real and showing both the ups and downs, that takes a lot of strength to show what actually happens on a real farm

I've had success doing this in the middle of the night when it's pitch black outside. Farming is all about learning and weve all made mistakes. I appreciate you sharing the good and the bad.

That is some harry potter vibe music! Eggspecto Goosetronum

Oh wow! I was holding my breath when you were trying to get the babies back in the box. So glad they’re all ok. Ya know, I’d try not to be so hard on yourself Morgan. You not a noob. You’re trying your best every day for the success of your animals and your farm. It’s ok!! 💜

Oof, that was hard to watch, I had to pause the video several time when I saw this baby gosling being flipped over defenseless, waving its tiny legs and getting hit by the mama goose.. 😭 Thankfully you stopped it in time, but I was very scared since it wasn’t moving in the box afterward, I thought it was injured or dead.. That’s a hard lesson learned, but a lesson nonetheless, so thank you for posting this video, and have a good day :)

Precious sweet baby gooslings they are really smart being well taken care of

Putting almost-hatched eggs under the mother goose might be better than an actual gosling that she had not been communicating with during incubation. Just a thought.

I love your compassion and also love your egg smuggling

I love how Toby Dog always comes to you when you come out to the pen, how remarkable this dog is

Just a thought, considering the high number of eggs that didn't hatch, could some of your ganders be shooting blanks?

It's gonna be ok Morgan, you tried. I would have thought to take her eggs then give her the goslings

When you explained in the video what you were going to do, it sounded like an interesting idea, BUT what I understood was that you were putting the EGGS about to hatch. Not the goslings..... For sure the goslings would be attacked by the protective geese. They are not like some chicken, and there is a reason geese are this aggressive and protective....When animals are worked up they don't see the difference between friend and foe and anything becomes a target. It was a very naive mistake, but glad u learned from it.

Dang, city boy. I thought you were gonna swap out the eggs with near-hatching ones, not stick a bunch of random goslings in a defensive gooses face.

Me: Save the baby! Save the baby! I was yelling at my tablet 😂🤣

Thanks for uploading~ I feel you on the part of wanting to try to see if they’ll adopt. Sometimes it’s just all about trying and finding out what works and what doesn’t. Also, who knows perhaps future farm owners may find your videos and learn from it 😄 Happy that the little one was okay at the end! 😍

Toby is so hapy whenever there is a new animal on the farm

As a new homesteader it makes me feel better that even my favorite homesteaders can make mistakes sometimes too. Thanks for sharing and I'm so delighted that the little one is doing okay now and pulled through. Your humility and humor is what keeps me coming back. Please never change

I volunteered with a wildlife rescue and the way you introduce baby goslings is you make sure the goose has some of their own young ones of the same age following them away from the nest and introduce them with the other babies. It does not work while they are still nesting, only while they are already following the mom.

I agree with other posts. Good intentions, but wrong approach. Should've switched soon-to-hatch eggs instead of goslings. Should also have moved the mother out first..

We had a very similar thing happen at a local pond area near us, where a woman had released 9 ducklings into the pond where there were other ducks and their ducklings. We knew she meant well, but the first thing that happened was one of the mothers with her preexisting ducklings went on a killing frenzy. A local wildlife rescue was called, but by then it was too late. The pond was full of floating duckling corpses, only 3 survived to be caught. The rescue centre ended up putting a plea out begging people to never just release ducklings and hope for the best, and to instead just take them straight to a rescue, regardless of if they were raised by people or otherwise (a lot of people hatch for the sake of it and then don't actually want to deal with the older birds, so they release them - which is basically a death sentence). It was eventually come forward that the woman who released them had caught the ducklings by a busy road and that the parents had flown off, so she just assumed they'd be on the pond nearby, which proved to be a big mistake. While I'm not pleased you did this experiment, especially having known that waterfowl don't just foster other babies (see: your past video on trying to get a duck to foster ducklings, and she ended up both scared of the group, and would attack them), I'm glad you're at least aware of it being wrong. Though the fact this is your second attempt trying it worries me for the future. Please don't do it again.

I can only imagine how bad it must feel having that little one get beat up like that. You can't predict what will happen. Was it a mistake? Yes. But you learned from it. Over all you are still a budding, learning farmer as you have said yourself. You dont have a long family history of this to learn from. And sometimes learning on the job can be heart breaking. You do more for your baby birds than most farmers who would just leave weak ones to die and not bother trying to help them. I am glad that the little one that got hit rebounded! Honestly if you wanted to do a hybrid approach I think the only way you can get away with it is to put actual eggs that are in the process of hatching under them so that the mothers think it's their egg. So shoo the mother off, sneak the eggs, ect. But that run the risk of you can't help if there are hatching trouble so it's up to you if you want to take that risk.

ONE OF THE EGGS I HATCHED FROM YOU IS A BRUCE GOOSE TOO!! Only 2 out of the 6 we got hatched, but I am so excited that one of them is a Bruce!!

I thought you were going to put eggs that were close to hatching under the geese. Isn't that the best way? Wouldn't they think those were her eggs?

3:57 smooth af transition. I must show my respect, Mr. Farmer Man.

💐🖐️💐 You shouldn't let mama goose take Toby's shed since the beginning, she is an invader of someone else's property.

9:12 Duck was head over heels excited to start the day!

Only comment I have is a goose bite doesn’t hurt much you need to brave it up a bit more bud . Even a scratch from the claws might sting but your a big man I’m sure you can handle a scratch or two …lol

Don’t beat yourself up! Each new attempt is another lesson learned. Not the end of the world! ❣️

The Kazuo music at the end, was spot on!

That most decidedly was not all your fault, Morgan. You are a good and conscientious man. Shit happens! Especially in nature. You’re very transparent in sharing that with us. Good luck! You’re a good farm daddy.

I had a similar problem this year with my chickens, lots of broody mammas that we couldn't break up. We had one nest attacked and the eggs/ newly hatched chicks were killed. The others were sitting on duck eggs. We only had one successful hatch, but they were transplants from my own incubator as well. We were hatching turkeys in the house and after the first two hatched I took some out to one of our momma birds that I truthfully didn't think were going to make it as they were already passed their hatch date. She hatched both but one had issues with its yolk and expired but the other is doing great and she recently brought it back to the main flock. All that being said, my best advice would have been to take eggs that are ready to hatch, distract the mom and swap in the good eggs. That seems to work the best and she gets the sense that she did the all the work too. IDK, giving momma birds already hatched babies rarely seems to go well but at least it looked like one of her eggs hatched in the end. Thank you for being honest with us and thankfully that little one was okay.

Hi...... Morgan nice to see you love watching your videos, thank you for showing your video homestead chicken Duck Goose farmer garden 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 bye 👋 👕🐔🐓🐥🐩🐈🏡🎥👍👍👍

Hey, Morgan! As always, I truly appreciate your transparency with your content, it's so refreshing and real. Everyone makes mistakes, even those responsible for taking care of animals, but you clearly want to and try to learn from your mistakes and aren't making these decisions with intention of harm or anything. Thus I commend you for showing us the good, the bad, and the ugly. As for your low hatching rates, perhaps the issue is that one of your ganders is infertile, maybe one of the newer/younger ones considering that you had better hatching rates last year. Just some food for thought! Keep up the good work and don't beat yourself up too much! You have fans here from all around the world cheering you on and learning with you! Cheers from Ontario, Canada!

Too many people edit their videos and won't show things that may make them look less than "great". Thank you for showing us the good and the "bad". I'm sure you're not the only person to try something like that. Nature is nature and people can't attach human emotions to nature taking its course. Good job being real. 👍🏼

Glad to hear that the gosling survived

Just thought of something for Toby’s doghouse opening to keep geese out. Wonder if a doggie door flap could be secured to the top of the opening and then teach Toby how to use it by putting tasty food inside. Just a thought lol.

You need to learn how to fail in order to learn from it and succeed, easy for people to hate but I love seeing the failures. Glad the little one is ok

I have seen others successfully do this with live babies. Maybe if you have two people: one to distract the mom and one to sneak the babies under her without her seeing you do it?

Wow!! I have done the same only with chickens! They wanted to hatch their eggs but had no success. So i incubated some and then put them under mama hen! Thankfully she did adopted them! But we have to learn some how and sometimes it's so hard to watch!! So thank you for sharing your experience!! Stay safe!

Even taking the pinned comment into account you most definitely could have saved the gosling earlier and it’s injuries could have been avoided altogether. Still like the channel but that was a pretty big whoopsies

Your honesty is appreciated! Perhaps this warning will help others better decide whether or not to take this type of risk. I hope you get fair criticism instead of hate.

I can hear Tosh's voice, "That's a bad mamma"

You had a lot of courage showing this one, I give you tremendous credit for that. When you were getting ready to set down the babies, I was screaming "NO!". I have to admit, I got very mad and upset, and was relieved when you admitted it was a dumb thing to do. I really do enjoy your uploads, please keep it up and best of luck to you and the success of your farm.

Only try giving babies at night when it is dark. I've had 100% success giving broody chickens purchased chicks, keets, etc. Never tried giving babies to geese or ducks. But when I switched out the fertile eggs you sent me with the unfertilized eggs under the goose, I did it at night. You want sleepy birds.

I love when you take us along for the ride! I’m 70 years old and I’ve never seen eggs hatch!

Ok Release the crackens, It never gets old

That goose from tobby's dog has to dissapear somehow, but the problem is that you don't even technically have the right angle to get it out XD. And peeps, don't forget that, as Morgan said, Pilgrim geese are one of the most friendly geese to the humans, so if those are friendly, then the rest of the geese would fight us at all costs 🤣

i would have stuck a hatching egg under the goose, not a hatchling. also, get some gloves thats let the geese bite you.

You have shown more empathy raising your flocks than most farmers I’ve known and seen. You have nothing to feel bad about. Keeping it real and honest, is why I have watched your videos from the very beginning.

10:00 back to their usual ying and yang formation

9:13 practicing parkour I see, lil' duck. You're gonna go far, kiddo!

*@Gold Shaw Farm* 2:17 Can't you add some extra support in the middle of that ramp? Some boulders or something? Or some extra wood support? It seams to be too steep in the beginning, because most of the ramp lies flat on the ground.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. Learning curves are just that Learning curves. What doesn't work one time might work the next and vice versa.

My uncle has a pair of goose but he gives the eggs to the chickens to hatch them

From cute little Goslings to Velociraptors LOL

Next episode is declaring war on the squatter in tobys house

You do a wonderful job of showing the realities of farming chin up sir!

Running with scissors and eating yellow snow is also not a good idea. ;)

No, just trying for the goose to adopt babies is something I was taught never to do as bird moms never take kindly to strange baby birds. Poor goslings.

Gosh I feel the struggle. Sometimes you just gotta try things. It’s one of the worst parts of farming that when you try things sometimes an animal pays with their health or life. I tried to get one of my best momma chickens to adopt another chick and she pecked it and the chick had a huge laceration on his side. He grew up inside and healed and was super friendly (bummed he turned out to be a rooster haha I had to rehome him to a home with kids cuz i knew he was friendly). Keep trying things Morgan!

I love the release of the Quacken! One would think it would result in some powerful roar and escape of a large Kraken-like beast 🦖 Instead, a small burst of waddling pitter-pat of around a dozen ducks and the occasional short flight to the ground 🥰😜🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆 I’m glad the gosling is ok 🐥 The chicken with the copper and blue feathers is gorgeous.

Great video Morgan hope you’re having a great day keep up the brilliant work

When I was a kid my old man kept geese for many years, not commercially just for fun. For us leaving them to it gave the most hatching success, we found that the more we tried to get them to comply with our well-meaning schemes the more they resisted and the madder they got. One thing I do remember, if you miss a failed egg in a nest they've decided to build in some random place and it knocks about until you find it months later be very careful. By this point the failed egg will be full of rank rotten stuff and the noxious gasses that build up might have pressurised it until it is like some horrific bio-weapon ready to explode at the slightest knock. For us kids these explodey eggs were highly prized because they made for awesome airgun targets.

Thx for sharing the good and bad of farming. At the very least it may prevent someone who watched doing the same thing. If you're not too freaked out about the whole matter, try sneaking in an almost hatched egg next time. Oh- and looks like at least one gosling has hatched naturally, that's a win!

glad Pablo got a cameo at the beginning of the video

to be fair, i think you need to just stop trying to let the geese raise their chicks.