On the advice of my friend Connie the Goose Woman I procured some carrots for Poly and Fredrik.
I washed and scrubbed them with a vegetable brush. I chopped them into bite sized pieces, and put them out for breakfast with the lettuces and broccoli.
They ate everything but the carrots.
Next morning I thought, well, maybe they are to large or too hard, so I grated them and mixed them into the other greens.
They picked out every single bit of orange food and spat it onto the ground!
Geese: 1
Carrots: 0
Point made!
Life on the Farmlet 
Farmlet? I love that word! Put a smile on my face 😀
Been the Farmlet since 2008, Danielle, glad you like it! 🙂
Is a farmlet different from a hobby farm? I so want a hobby farm someday….sigh….
Oh yes! LOL! We are currently on one acre, but when we move to our new place it will be 20 acres. There it might be considered a hobby farm as the farmable bits will be 1/3 of the total. The rest are still covered in woods.
Well, good for you for having your own corner of the universe!
OMG Im laughing so hard! Geese are such jerks!
Did you try cabbage? (Now Im afraid to tell you what they like!) They do love apples, all geese love apples. hahaha…….. ok that was the best laugh I have had all day. geese will always make a liar out of you. I swear. Mine wont touch persimmons, even in the 200-400 goose flocks I have here. A friend of mine -with geese- can never get hers before the geese do. I let them clean up under the pear trees as well.
In August I buy the watermelons in the fields after they stop selling them. The geese go mad for them. I give up! lol! Geese!
Mine love watermelon and apples, but the apples must me peeled! They used to eat the cabbage and collard greens and now they refuse them. I’m wondering if the cabbage and collards have too much insecticide residue. I soak and rinse everything I serve them from the market, but they will no longer eat them. Go figure? Glad to make you laugh, Connie! (Really!) 😉
good thing these were not carot gold rings
LOL! Bob, if they were, I would never have served them up! 😉
Who knew geese were so finicky!
Well, I sure didn’t, but in the almost seven years I have been raising them I am learning volumes! 😀
Oh, and by the way, they seem to have a voracious appetite for fruit tree bark… they girdled three of my fruit trees and killed them one summer. 😦
Big Dog used to do that with broccoli!! c
There is just no accounting for our animal’s appetites, is there, Celi? LOL!
Ah the joy of life and the joy of Geese! You raised a great smile, thank you x
Claire, thank you, and I am only to happy to have made you smile!
Wow, even with you serving them up they were quite fussy eaters! Actually, it made for a really good story and I enjoyed it immensely.
Nancy
I’m so glad you enjoyed these silly geese of mine, Nancy!
I follow blogs for a number of reason. The first, of course, is that I’ve become friends with someone. But secondly, I like what they share. And I love hearing about the farmlet and everything else going on in your life.
Thank you very much, Nancy.
That’s in the category of you learn something every day.
LOL, Tom! 😀
LOL!!!!! Thank you for closing out my day with one huge giggle!!!!! ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!
Glad you enjoyed this, Doreen!
That made me laugh. I do tell my pets that they’re allowed to have their opinions though.
Having their own opinions is one thing, but anarchy is quite another! 😉
The question is, Is it the colour they object to? Would they reject yellow or purple carrots? Maybe try them with pumpkin to see if they’ll eat that flavour of orange… Who knew geese were so particular about their vegies?
Indeed, Kate! Who knew? I will have to wait awhile before I can test the theory on pumpkin. I can tell you they don’t mind red tomatoes, or super-hot chili-peppers. I watched Polly raid my pepper patch one day and then saw her panting after. Hm. I wonder if hot chilies effect them the same way as they do us when they come out? (Sorry, but I do wonder!)
You have me wondering in earnest now! I may try growing some of the other colored carrot varieties this spring to see if it is the color, and not the flavor, that they are objecting to! 😉
Goose, er, doings are already so runny. How much worse could it possibly get?!
It’s the heat factor, Kate. 😉
Worrying… You could end up with jet-propelled geese…
One of the ways to keep squirrels out of bird seed is to treat the seed with hot pepper. The birds don’t have receptors for it. Squirrels do. I suspect geese would be the same as any other bird in that regard.
I never knew that hot pepper would keep the squirrels out of the bird seed! I will have to try this. Thank you, Linda!
When children do this, their plate usually gets put back in the fridge and served to them the next day, and the next, and the next… until they finally eat their carrots!
Yes, Squirrel Dearest!
I left the chunks overnight to see if they might change their attitude about them, but they wouldn’t eat them. That’s when I tried the shredded carrots thinking that if I mixed them in that they would have no choice but to eat them… not so! I can’t imagine even a child going to all that meticulous, fussy maneuvering to remove them, yet the geese accomplished the task!
Emphatically! So, what’s in carrots that they should be having?
Annie, I honestly don’t know, but can only assume that it’s the same stuff we need. Right now I wouldn’t be bothering, but we have no grass and they need fresh garden stuff to stay healthy. A goose cannot live on grain alone! 😀
That is too funny! I recently tried to give my ducks some food that I read they would like (cat kibble, spinach and oatmeal) and they wouldn’t touch any of it…to the point where they didn’t eat anything until I caved and gave them back their cracked corn.
Katy, it is a panic to feed the water fowl in winter. We both know that they need the grain to help warm them up in the cold, but equally, we know it isn’t a good diet when eaten as a sole food source. I tried to grow alternate things under the covers on the raised beds for them, but our cat and a little vole decimated them. Three beds full! 😦
We are replanting grasses in the goose and chicken yards this spring. We shall see if the new varieties will hold up to the weather and the geese’ constant nibbling.
PS: There was a duck on the Mountain Farmlet that the ate cat’s food all the time. So I know they do eat it. Maybe they like a special flavor or brand, eh? LOL!
Funny! I’m so glad you showed a pic of the carrots.
Laurie, would anyone have believed it if I hadn’t shared the picture? LOL!
The funniest part of this post is that it reminded me of my mother, happily picking out the English peas or mushrooms from any dish, and shoving them to the side of her plate. 🙂
Linda, I can’t say too much against food picking, human or goose, as I pick out my carrots too… but then, I am allergic to carrots! Makes me sad, because I love the flavor of them. 😦
Big Daddy doesn’t love carrot peels, but he’ll nibble at them. Now my ducks like them really well. They all go crazy over greens though. It’s funny that yours won’t eat them. I’ve come to the conclusion that birds are weird sometimes. I actually saw my female duck eat a small frog yesterday.
My other Gooselady friend says hers devour carrots, but no, not my geese. 😉 I have seen my geese (and chickens) eat some strange things! Lizards, frogs, snails, worms. I always thought geese were vegetarians! It is alarming at times out there in the farm yard; isn’t it?