Aphrodite hatched in June at a hatchery. My brother and I got Aphrodite and two other goslings, Loose, a Toulouse goose and Athena, a Brown Chinese goose. Jason bought the goslings. (At the time I wasn't nearly as close to geese as I am now.
The goslings were very cute. I can't remember what Athena and Loose looked like much, but I can remember Aphrodite. She was yellow and fluffy, and I didn't like her much at first.
After a while, the three goslings got to roam around in the yard. The grass was green, and the goslings were getting their feathers. Athena turned mostly brown, Loose turned grey, and Aphrodite turned full white.
Then Aphrodite got signs of wear. A while after we had put the three young geese in with Meesa and Miah, (aldult female sisters who have a strong bond to each other) Aphrodite got caught on the fence. Jason and I had gone outside to get a goose to hold, and there was Aphrodite, caught on the fence.
Her leg was trapped among wires and the skin was torn. We had to cut the wire to get it free. It took some time for Aphrodite to heal and she had a slight limp after she was healed.
In general, Aphrodite was a charming goose. Her honk was like an oink. She had a pencil thin neck. She fought geese twice her size when we got 9 nine more geese. We wanted Aphrodite to mate a gander named Snowball (one of the new geese) but she never did.
Aphrodite got dirty in the winter. She died on a Friday, probbably of hypothermia. It was our fault she died. She had not been interested in her food on Wednesday.
Snowball, the gander we wanted Aphrodite to mate with, had a very gentle personality. He would not run away if you tried to pick him up. That might have been because he was dehydrated and starving. We put him in a box a day or two before he died and then took him out the next day. Snowball died very soon after that. Yet again, it was out fault.
Mister Queen came very near death. He was in the box with Snowball. He was also taken out of the box. When we put Queen in the box next, he stayed in it for about 3 weeks.
There have been funny things that happened to the geese. When Jason first named Loose, his named was spelled Louse. We tried to sex the 9 geese we got, and said that Mister Winston Goose was a female. He's really a male. Sondwodezo and Snowflake were males, then they were females and now they're males again. Spex, Sparks and Comet were males and now they are females. We know they are females because they are Pilgrim Geese and Pilgrim Geese are the only geese who can be sexed by color.
Comet, who is King Konk's mate, would yell a lot when she wasn't with King and vice versa. When Comet started sitting on her nest, we thought she was a crazy gander, not a perfectly sensible female.
I would say that if you want to be a good goose caretaker you need to be very aware of the geese's slightest signs of sickness. If you put a goose in a warm box, you want to keep it in the box for a few days or at least until it warms up. Also, to escape embarrasment, do not try to sex a goose unless you know exactly how to.
This is Aphrodite before she died. I miss her a whole lot.
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