The guarded area around each nest is small, so that a favorable habitat may contain many nests which form loose colonies. The nests are crudely lined hollows, usually among vegetation, and there the female lays a clutch of 3-8 eggs. The male does not help her incubate the eggs, but stands guard. When the young hatch, after from 24 to 30 days of incubation, both parents accompany them to water and share in their care. The chicks must change from downy balls to fully fledged, strong flying birds before the snows come in early autumn.
Time is short for such large birds to rear young.
Geese cannot afford to migrate or winter on nine-tenths power and so the adults moult while the youngsters are still growing their first flight feathers. Thus the entire population of geese are flightless for a couple of weeks or so at the end of the breeding season. To escape predators they keep to lakes, rivers and tundra pools. Geese ordinarily pair for periods of years, if not for life, and their lives may be long, individuals nearly fifty years old having been reported.