The pairing resulted in a clutch of fertilized eggs and the first two tiny goslings Little Mama was able to hatch out. “Eventually he wore her down and they have been inseparable ever since.” That was this past spring and Little Mama had moved herself in with the chickens where she occupied a line nesting box up in the corner of the coop. “She wanted nothing to with him and his own mother would get between them like she was saying, ‘that hussy is not good enough for my boy.’” “We ended up with this spare male gosling and before he was even fully feathered, he was chasing her around,” Talbot said. Then along came a young male goose who took quite the interest in the dejected female. But Little Mama seemed to have experienced more than her fair share of heartache. Predation, illness, weather and accidents can all kill livestock. Loss of eggs and even mates is not uncommon on homesteads. Little Mama eventually put herself in a sort of barnyard self-exile in the barn and refused to venture down to the pond for about a year. “She refused to go near anyone and to make it worse, that was the first year a lot of the other geese hatched out their goslings.” “When she figured out he was not coming back, she went back and just sat on her unfertilized eggs,” Talbot said. For her part, Little Mama spent several days looking and calling out for her mate.
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