Housing and Care
Geese form a tightly knit flock and will often graze close to one another without scattering. When they perceive a threat they will bunch together like a group of sheep...only a lot more intelligent. This makes housing relatively simple. Geese can be allowed to free range during the day and herded into a pen at night to keep them safe from predators such as stray dogs, foxes and coyotes.
Since they are covered in down, they don't need a fancy enclosure. A shed that keeps them dry and buffers them from the wind is enough. Some people have built pens out of hay bales with a braced board on the front as a door.
If you let your geese out daily then don't provide food or water inside the pen overnight. They will make a mess out of the water since they don't sleep through the night like chickens, and they might choke if allowed to eat feed dry.
Fencing
If you are keeping your geese in a pen, make sure that the fencing is at least five feet high to discourage predators from jumping inside. Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to create a predator-proof fortress without spending a fortune, but a pen can still be made on a budget.
2x4" cattle fencing is perfect for geese, but can be disasterous for goslings under a few months of age. Very young goslings can pop through the lower wire, and goslings that have yet to fully feather out can get their necks stuck. Always assume that if a goose can stick his neck into a hole, he can find a way to harm himself. We had one gosling that managed to stick his head through the cattle wire, only to stick it back through another hole and get it caught on his bill. When we found him he was nearly dead and had deep grooves where the wire had dug into the flesh. In another instance the gosling wasn't as lucky and died when he had caught himself over the night.
The safest way to avoid these problems is to line the bottom 18" with a smaller wire if you plan on keeping goslings inside the pen. Otherwise simply keep the goslings elsewhere until they are old enough to go in with the adults.
Watering
During the summer months, a stock tank or kiddie pool is useful for swimming, bathing and keeping cool. This water will become dirty quickly, with kiddie pools needing to be dumped and refilled every few days. This water is rich in nutrients and shouldn't go to waste. Attach a drain to the side and run a hose to your garden to water your plants. This water is great for anything, especially during dry months and growing/harvest times when the plants need more nutrients.
If you use a stock tank it will not need to be dumped nearly as often. To keep the work from piling on, and to make sure you keep mosquito larvae in check, get one or two dozen feeder goldfish - the cheap ones. In addition to that, you can always go to a creek or pond and collect some aquatic plants from stagnant pools of water. These plants will enjoy the benefits of the goose manure that the goldfish (who will happily devour the partially digested grass and seeds and unfortunate insects) leave behind.
Expect a few of the goldfish to die before everything adjusts, and try to buy them earlier in the year so they have plenty of time to get used to their surroundings before winter comes. Once winter has arrived the fish will become more sluggish, but will be fine. A pond heater that leaves a small hole in the ice for the geese to drink out of will also be used by the goldfish for fresh oxygen.
Feeding
Growing gosling require a high protein content to keep up with their fast growth, but once they are grown the protein needs are reduced by half, if not more, to 12-16%. Feeding a high-protein diet to older geese will result in a disorder known as Angel Wing. Angel Wing causes one or both wing feathers to jut out at an angle instead of being held smooth along the sides. Whether a high protein diet causes Angel Wing or causes individuals who carry an Angel Wing gene to sprout the deformed feathers is still unknown. Enough studies have been done on flocks of Canada Geese to know that, for whatever reason, individuals on a high protein diet are more likely to come down with Angel Wing.
If your feed store does not provide a goose or waterfowl feed, and you can't convince them to carry it, chicken laying pellets, oats and some horse and cattle feeds make good substitutes. When experimenting with feed, remember to do so slowly. Like most animals, geese do not like a change in their diet. Mixing the new feed with the old over the course of a few days will make both them and their digestive tracts more agreeable to the change.
During the laying months, chicken laying feed will give them the calcium they need to produce strong, healthy eggs. A handful of corn or oats are also apprecated, as are grass clippings if your geese are unable to be let out to graze. Geese love grass and providing grass clippings both keeps your yard clean and feeds your geese for free, cutting down on their costs.
In late summer, grass loses a lot of its nutritional value as it dries up. By now the geese have stopped laying and a layer feed is no longer necessary. Some horse and cattle feeds are very cheap while still having everything the geese need to make it through the winter. Our geese are particularly fond of "sweet feed," a molassass coated pellet with bits of corn throughout.
Pasture Geese
If you are interested in having your geese mostly grow on grass, then a pasture of some variety should be provided. Geese will make short work of the grass inside their sleeping quarters, and it tends to be too expensive to put a roof and floor on an entire pasture. Letting them roam in a field during the day and be put up in a pen at night is ideal.How much grazing space each goose needs is ultimately up to where you live and what type of pasture is being provided. Bad weather and what type of seasons and temperatures you have will all factor in. We are able to keep around 30 geese comfortably within a quarter acre pasture with supplemental feed provided. Within that space, we still need to mow on occasion when the geese can't keep up with the grass growth, and still have bald patches around the pen where the geese go in at night (incide the 18x20' pen there isn't any grass at all).
Ideally, you want your geese to be able to mow the grass for you without bald patches showing up in the field. If you are constantly having to mow then block off an area to decrease the amount of grass they have to keep trimmed (or get more geese). If the grass is looking bare and well worn then give them more room or move the geese to a separate pen or pasture until the grass has recovered. Using the goose water on these pastures can help give them a boost to keep up with more geese.