Duck-Duck the goose

Meet Duck-Duck. No, I did not name him...

He's an aproximately 9 month old Embden gander who was turned in to a shelter after being hand-raised as a pet. Lucky for him one of the people who works at the shelter has a soft spot for fowls and asked me if I might be interested as she knew I had an Embden girl without a partner.
Duck-Duck does have a bit of a bad habit though - being handraised and imprinted on humans he has no idea he is a goose and being a strapping lad now coming into maturity, Duck-Duck is a bit confused about who he ought to be mating. So far he has been very well behaved here although we're watching him carefully for training as necessary as you can imagine it's not a terribly good thing to have such a large bird with that sort of habit. Hopefully though he will bond nicely with my Embden girl and this will go a long way to solving the problem of misplaced hormones.

Settling in has proved interesting as to the best of my ability to discern, he has never seen another bird since the day he hatched and he has no idea he is one or how to relate to them. In many ways, the poor fellow is really quite divorced from his own culture, although he is showing some curiousity now after a week and a bit in that he will watch them from a meter or two away. He is enjoying the space though and especially the rainy weather of our autumn!