While the Coalition can offer some general information about Canada goose medical care and what to do about abandoned goslings, eggs or how to handle other situations where geese need help, please realize that this is not our area of expertise. These issues are best handled by a willdife rehabilitator in your area that has experience with waterfowl. Below you will find information on some common concerns regarding the well-being of Canada geese and tips on how to find a wildlife rehabber in your area.

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Severely injured Canada geese need the help of an experienced wildlife rehabilitator. Those with less serious conditions (minor limps, etc.) may not need treatment if the birds appear to be healthy otherwise (e.g., if they can get around and are eating, etc.). Often times there are borderline cases for which the opinion of a rehabber might be needed.

Resources on the web that can help you find a wildlife rehabilitator in your area:

How to Locate a Wildlife Rehabilitator

Wildlife Care Rehabilitator Listing

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[Answer courtesy of Don Feare, J.D., Executive Director, Wildflight Rescue Foundation.]

Goslings are unable to survive very long on their own. You may have saved his or her life.

In captivity, here at Wildflight, we usually feed a product known as "chick starter", "start-n- grow" or "poultry starter", all the same product depending on where in the country you live. It is a granulated food developed for young poultry. He (or she) should only be fed this product as a complete diet for about a month. After that, you can start mixing in stuff like scratch grains (chicken feed). If he is already eating well, you might just incorporate the starter in what you are currently feeding him. The starter merely has more protein, etc., for the early developmental stages that he needs and would be getting if he were feeding in the wild (especially in the water).

While once fledged they will be accepted by a flock, this does not mean they will know what they need to know to survive well. Humans simply cannot teach them as much as the parents would. At Wildflight, we try to put them in with other birds for this process. I realize you may not be set up for such a thing, so I might suggest that you attempt to locate a GOOD, EXPERIENCED wildlife rehabilitator who could finish raising the gosling with other birds and then release him. If you can't locate someone like that, don't feel bad, you are giving the gosling the best chance he could have.

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Geese have been known to build nests high enough off of the ground to catch the attention of concerned observers. In many cases, when the nest is the equivalent of only one story high, there is no need for concern. When hatched, the goslings will follow the mother goose down by jumping and floating (not flying) to the ground (they weigh very little when first hatched). In the ideal situation, the gosling will be able to land on a soft surface such as grass, water, soil or other vegetation (i.e., not pavement or stones). Even at this safe jumping height there are possible complications depending on where the nest is located.

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[Answer courtesy of Don Feare, J.D., Executive Director, Wildflight Rescue Foundation.]

While the idea of incubating goose eggs and raising goslings sounds easy, you should seriously consider what you are getting yourself into. We do not recommend it. We hope the following information will dissuade you from doing so.

Assuming the eggs are from wild, migratory geese (i.e. Canadas), they will take between 25-35 days to hatch. However, in order to properly incubate the eggs, there must be a combination of both proper temperature and humidity. The eggs also must be turned properly. This is not to say that the eggs won't hatch, even if done incorrectly. While geese have been known to hatch with just a heating blanket, you do not get a strong and healthly goose that way.

Baby geese, and waterfowl as a whole, eat microorganisms in the water and growth upon rocks. They also eat dirt. That is, they run the dirt through their bills, allowing the material not wanted to run out through the small serrated edge of the bill. You can simulate this feeding each day with a product known as "Start-n-Grow" or "Chick Start", depending what it is called where you live. It is almost a powder but made up of very small little pieces. You can feed this product to the goslings exclusively for the first month. After that you will need to start mixing in scratch grains (chicken feed) and add more and more each week until you have weaned them off of the original feed. The reason is that the original feed is far too high in protein and they only need this sort of diet during the early stages of their development.

They will probably not eat at first and possibly up to 6-8 hours after hatching. You must provide water, however. This should be done in a very small container that they cannot get in to. The hen would normally ensure when they got wet that they then got under her wings to bring their body temperature back up. They are normally about 106 degrees. They lose body temperature very quickly when they have no feathers. So don't let them get soaked. As to the original feed, you may have to sprinkle some in their water to get them to start eating it or, dip their bills in the water and then in the food so that the food adheres to the bill. But make sure they pick up on the eating process.

You will need to provide a constant heat source. I recommend a heating blanket set either on low or medium, depending on how warm these settings make the blanket. You don't want to cook them. Put a towel over the blanket. The towel will need to be changed regularly to avoid problems with their droppings.

After about two months, they will probably be eating grass, bugs, etc., around your property. Once they have their feathers, you don't have to worry about them getting wet or their body temperature.

Even if you have access to a safe release site after the goslings have matured, the question becomes whether or not the geese you raised can be expected to survive on their own.

Immature geese are trained by their parents. They are trained what to eat, what not to eat, what to be afraid of, where to nest, where to rest at night, etc., etc.

Obviously, you cannot provide such training. Therefore, you have to approximate their experience as much as possible to that of their natural world. This means continuous exposure to the wild environment through their growing process. Here you take a real chance of losing them if the body of water is not such that you can re-capture them after brief exposure to the wild. To be sure, you will not be able to teach them all they need to know about their world, but you might be able to come reasonably close.

At this point you may be wondering why not take the hatchlings to be adopted by another goose family. Unfortunately, this won't happen. The male of the waterfowl (ducks, geese and swan[s]) are the protective gender. Of these, the male goose is by far the most protective of any young, including other types of waterfowl. However, the female will easily attempt to kill any young that are not hers. So you can't throw them out with some others that have just hatched. Adults identify their young by both sight and, more importantly, sound. They can easily distinguish between theirs and another family.

Once fledged (first flying) they will be somewhat uncoordinated and will probably have to be retrieved at least a couple of times. They may even fly into buildings or fences so you will have to be somewhat cautious when they first fledge.

After that, they will decide what they want to do. If this all takes place at a time between the migration of flocks flying over, they will probably stay around until they see that first flock fly over. It is at this time they will be looking for mates and will just as likely join the flocks they see flying. If you live near waterfowl habitat, they may find geese there to mate with and simply stay around. No one knows why they make the decisions they do, nor why they make them when they do.

Just so you know, the movie "Fly Away Home" was a tremendous over-simplification of the goose rearing process.

The trick with all of this is to try not to let them bond to you. When they do that, they will continue to count on you as their food source and source of protection. Waterfowl, at time of hatch, adopt the first thing they see as their parent. It is best that you let them hatch and not make contact with them for a couple of hours afterwards. During the rearing time, don't treat them as pets. Try to reduce your contact with them as they grow. The less human contact they have, the better, especially if they are to be released to survive on their own.

If the above sounds as if it requires lots of patience, lots of work, well, it does. Humans simply cannot prepare waterfowl for release without a truly planned and regimented program designed to raise them as geese, with geese. At Wildflight, as soon as the waterfowl are old enough, they are put in with other waterfowl of all types. That way, they gain the experience of learning from their own kind before they are put out on the refuge and perhaps, to leave. Nothing replaces mother goose and nothing ever will. There are so many things they know that we can't even begin to understand. As an example, what human could possibly navigate across the nation and even into foreign nations to finally arrive at a spot within a few hundred yards of where they should be? How do they know what substances in the water are harmful? If it had been by experimentation, the parents would be dead.

If you decide to undertake this ordeal, good luck. To be done properly requires dedication and a true sense of responsibility. It is very different from raising a pet dog that will never have to know anything except what you teach it.

As you can tell from reading all of this, because of the complexity of the undertaking, we discourage humans from incubating eggs. There are plenty of geese to produce eggs and then properly raise their young.