Wyoming rancher Shery Jespersen decided to do a good deed. She saved two goose eggs from a fox and gave them to her hens to raise. That was nearly 25 years ago, and one of the geese has returned to her farm every year since. In 2000, Wyoming Game & Fish Department was trying to repopulate Canada geese in Wyoming, but a fox was attacking the nest near where a pair of reintroduced birds had laid their eggs. When the number of eggs dwindled from 10 to 2 and the nesting pair had fled the predator, Shery stepped in. “I had small bantam hens wanting to set, so I gave them the eggs,” she said. The little chickens seemed happy to hop on the eggs, despite the fact that they were about 3 times the size of chicken eggs. “A setting hen wants to set, and they’re pretty determined to do that, so I slipped this giant egg underneath and it didn’t seem to matter if it was too big, she just crawled on top of it and fluffed herself out,” said Shery. When the eggs hatched in May, one of the hens took on mothering duties for the pair. Even as the brother and sister grew bigger than their adoptive mother and developed distinctly different feathers, she would still attempt to keep them in check. “Early on, when they first started to try flying down our driveway, she would run after them in a panic,” Shery said. Unfortunately, their true identity became clear as autumn approached and a flock of Canada geese on a migratory path arrived at a nearby pond. Attracted by the honking, the pair started flying over to see them, returning to the chicken house and the mother hen in the evenings. One day, they were gone — an outcome that Shery had always hoped for. After they flew the nest in 2000, she carried on with life on the ranch, tending the cattle, horses and chickens. Then, two years after the geese left, she was in for a surprise. That spring, a male and female flew into the ranch, with the gander waddling in and making himself at home. “I knew it was him because wild geese don’t come into a barnyard and hang out with chickens,” Shery said. “As far as he was concerned, he was just coming back and visiting family.” The female, however, stayed away, and Shery deduced that she was his new mate, not used to the ways of domesticity. She assumed that the female she had hatched on the farm had found her own mate and followed him to nesting grounds elsewhere. Canada geese can travel up to 3,000 miles during the winter in search of open water, usually returning to their birthplace in the spring. Shery has no idea where the pair go each year, but since 2002 they have made their way back to the Upton ranch every spring, sometimes with their own yearlings in tow. Today, there is no shortage of Canada geese around the area where Shery lives in northeastern Wyoming, thanks in part to the actions of her and a little bantam hen with a big heart.
