Backyard Poultry Forum

I bought two geese from our local farmers market. They are cross bred geese I think, as they don't look exactly like any of the breed pictures I've seen. The lady I bought them from said that the females are all grey and white, the ganders are all white but occasionally she sees a grey and white gander. So I decided on these two girls, and they've settled in well, they live in one of the chook yards with assorted chickens, make a mess of their water, hiss at the dog, eat the chook food, all ok til I realised the white headed one is missing lots of feathers off the back on her neck. I wondered if the grey one was mounting her, today I saw her doing just that. Or him. With some poultry this can be a power or pecking order thing, before I got a drake, one of my ducks used to mount the others, but I dont know if geese do that. So, some goose advice needed...how do I tell if its a goose or a gander? If its a gander, will I need another goose, will all the attention be too much for one goose?

thanks, Allison

First of all, yes 2 geese will do that so that is not indicative.

Geese generally pair up so a single pair is fine and the goose will be ok.

As for sexing them, if they are mature, ganders are usually a lot bigger in build than a goose or if you have a look at the top of the waterfowl section, there is an article on vent sexing ducks.

J

_________________
Some mornings I wake up grumpy but most mornings I let her sleep in.
Just Marans

I was kind of hoping there was an easier way to tell...I have worked out how to resize and upload photos this morning, 8) [img][img]http://gallery.backyardpoultry.com/data/500/medium/102_1441crre5.jpg[/img]
this is the goose, you can see where the feathers are missing at the back of her head. She is more timid than the grey headed one.

this is the suspected gander, sold to me as a goose, she/he is much bolder,

as you can see, the dog is pretty nervous! Its not aggressive, it runs after us with its head stretched out hissing, but if you turn around and look at it, it stops and walks away as if it was busy doing something else. It honks more than the other one. If anyone can tell me if its a goose or a gander by the photo, Im a bit unsure about catching it and inspecting the vent...
thanks, Allison

They are x breeds, with roman blood in them.

The second bird is definately a gander - you can tell by the more dominant stance and the toying with the dog.

In regards to geese being sex linked as suggusted by the lady you purchased them from - the only breed that does that in Aus is the Pilgrim, sky blue/grey females and white males.

http://tribeofhonk.backyardpoultry.com/ ... _Page.html

Honk

_________________
If you can keep chooks, geese will be a BREEZE!

Thanks for that TOH, I had planned to get a gander to go with the two geese, maybe at Euroa, so I'm glad I found out before that. If I got another goose to go with them would they all get along or would the goose and gander pair up and leave the other goose on its own?
Thanks also for your opinion of the breed, I will have a look at roman geese. I had a look at your web site after I got the geese to see if they matched any pictures, as I thought they were pilgrim geese, but they didn't look quite like anything else.

Allison

Geese generally will pair up, and not mate with more than one.

Occasionally, and i mean occasionally some gander will be a bit more firsky.

In general a gandr will pick his girl and thats it.

If i was you, i would get a second gander and the geese will sort out who is with who. The two pairs will cohabit fine and you have much better chance of getting some goslings.

Regards

Tim

_________________
If you can keep chooks, geese will be a BREEZE!

thanks Tim, the geese or rather goose and gander are siblings, would any offspring be too inbred? Thats the reason why I got two geese, as the lady I bought them from said she didn't want to sell pairs because of the risk of inbreeding.

Allison

It all depends how many generations hers are. Personally seeing as they are x breeds, a new gander might not go astray.

It isnt a huge issue, but if she has been breeding the same parents/goslings to each other for a few years, yes it will result in reduced fertility and lack of vigour in the young - and a higher percentage of DIS (dead in shells).

Honk

_________________
If you can keep chooks, geese will be a BREEZE!

he's a gander alright

Well done! I didn't look at the date of posts when I started reading this - what a lovely surprise at the end!

So, did you end up getting more geese or did you just stick with the original pair?

Like cackles, I hadn't looked at the dates and had a nice surprise at the end. Your goslings are lovely!

NellyG

_________________
NellyG ........................

I kept the original pair even though I was worried about inbreeding, the goose sat on 9 eggs and 9 hatched (sadly the goose squashed a couple in the nest the first day and one drowned in the very shallow water dish, I think the goose stood on it) so I don't think they are too inbred, but I wont keep the goslings and breed with them too. The goslings are just gorgeous though, and I don't want to break up the family yet. The gander leads them around and the goose brings up the rear, they all watch the parents carefully to learn what to do. The gander is SO protective of his family, he knew the day they were hatching and stood guard in the doorway of the chook pen and let no one in, we couldn't even collect the hen eggs. It was two weeks before we were game enough to go into the chook yard without a large gander-wrangling stick and the poor dog got bitten on the bum a couple of times when I took him with me to distract the gander while I put out food and water! And don't the goslings grow fast! And poo a lot!!

Allison