One of my personal favourite residents of mums place is the affectionately named Patte the goose. Patte has been living with us ever since they first moved to the country years ago and came at the same time as Sherman the alpacca and the three goats Daisy, Ivy and Poppy.
Loving the sprinkler on a hot day
About Patte
Being an adult when she came and since geese lives in groups she needed to show her dominance to establish her position in the pack. It clearly became clear she was going to be in charge, Sherman is the protector of the group but even Patte will boss him away from a food bowl or nip him if she feels the need.
Patte is a breed of goose that cannot fly, given we have large predators contained by only fences any animals that can climb or fly are at increased danger of ended up in the wrong place and coming face to face with a crocodile.
She lives, eats and sleeps with the other barnyard animals and doesn't seem at all fussed to have no other geese around. Her and Sherman have become good friends and can often be seen roaming around together, sometimes as far as the creek down the back of the property. But they always come home and always return for food.
He's just sleeping
If anyone enters the property or she happens to see somebody wandering around she will start screeching and honking at them, if they come anywhere near her she will proceed to put out her wings, lower her head and neck and if you turn your back she charges at you and bites at your feet and ankles. While it doesn't hurt it is funny. If you walk towards her she will backup slowly keeping her eyes on you and if you reach out to her she will snap at your hand or turn and run.
She is well known for harassing smaller children so all guests are warned about her but she won't really hurt anyone. Just gives them a good scare sometimes. Nothing funnier than watching someone running away and Patte chasing them honking away.
One of her favourite things to do is sit in her little pool or look at herself in a mirror. She had a mirror in with them but the goats broke it so now she just sits near windows admiring herself.
When she lays eggs!
Patte will often start nesting and lay eggs, when she makes her nest and has laid her eggs she will stay with them even at detriment to her own health. Often we will need to force her away from her eggs to get her to eat or drink as otherwise she stays sitting on them.
Then there is the times she nests without eggs... One time after a week of not leaving her nest mum decided she needed to get out and eat and we would take the eggs to stop her from nesting. When we got her out and dug around in the nest we found she had spent the last week trying to incubate a pinecone :(. Poor confused Patte.
Guarding her nest
Oh no, just a pinecone and a bowl
When she does produce eggs though they are huge, since they're never fertilised whenever we notice she has laid now we take the eggs from her so as she doesn't stay nesting. The eggs cook up quite nicely, taste very similiar to a chicken egg, only difference being when you crack one it usually takes up the entire fry-pan. Great for a 1 egg omelette though.
Attempting to live with an emu
Before the emu enclosure was finished they had a smaller yard, when one of the emus passed away suddenly the other was left without his sister and became quite lonely. In an attempt to cheer him up we thought hecould live with Patte, Sherman and the goats. At first things seemed to be okay, they sort of all stayed away from each other, kept to themselves. Slowly though the emu got a bit mean, he would pick on the goats and Sherman and they would hide from him and run away.
But not Patte.
No Patte would hiss at him and bite at his feathers if he tried to boss her around. Given the size disparity it was a little amusing to see a little goose bullying a 6 foot emu. Soon after the emu yard was done and he was moved back. The fences are next to each other so they could always see each other but no more fighting.
Good old Patte not taking no shit from no-one.
Head up and confident
Pattes getting a new friend!
Soon though a new introduction will be made and we hope it goes smoothly as Patte the goose is introduced to Tommy the turkey!. Tommy will be coming to live at my mums house and hopefully him and all the other barnyard animals can get along. It will be interesting to see how Patte takes to another similiar sized bird.
I assume we will introduce them slowly, through a cage of some sort first or fenced off section, see ow they react and then slowly let them meet. If they don't get along I'm sure there is another spot somewhere for Tommy and he might need to get some chicken friends. Or maybe he could hang out with Peter the rabbit and the 2 guinea pigs. Peter quite likes being the king of his domain though and recently survived an attack by a dog. Big tough boy he is.
Patte will live with us for the rest of her life, I'm not even sure how long that is because I don't even know how old she is, but she's a sweetheart and we enjoy having her around.