Anyone's Cotton Patch Geese laying?

[RHRanch]

I am letting my 3 pairs hatch out their eggs this year. I let my 6 run together and pair up as they wanted. I have 3 geese on 2 nests - lol I know that usually 2 birds on a nest doesn't result in a good hatch, but thus far the 2 hens are sharing the space peacefully. I had plenty of nests, but this one female just kept insisting on being in the nest with the first one. I tried putting eggs in the other nest but it didn't work. Yes, these geese are so gentle that I was able to move eggs around without being bitten by the geese or the ganders! I know one nest (shared one) has at least 12 eggs. The other one had 8 at the last count. I will be selling babies locally (San Diego County), and they should hatch in the next 5-7 days. It will be interesting to see what kind of a hatch they have. I am thinking of removing the goslings after the hatch because these are very young birds (I picked them up from Serina last April or May I think as goslings) and I don't want to see any babies lost from exposure/smooshing/angry geese.

 

[AuroraSprings]

We just had our first Cotton Patch gosling hatch for 2012!! It's a girl!

 

[greatergraceoffbg]

There were NOT orange feet and bills. They were exclusively pink. The Pilgrim Geese, totally unrelated had the orange. People have mixed them to sell because everyone breeding has waiting lists and at 50.00 per bird in a dead economy thats a small fortune.

 

[Blackhorsehill]

Does anyone know the answer to another question?

Is there a difference in appearance between the saddleback ganders and the solid ganders when they hatch? As far as I know, they look the same after they mature, but if there is a way to tell the difference at some point, that would be good information to have.

 

[AuroraSprings]

When I spoke to Mark See (who I got mine from), he said the flight feathers will be tipped in grey on the gander if he's heterozygous for saddleback/pied. I don't know if that's something just with his birds or something he's consistently seen. Never got to speak with him again about it.

 

[RHRanch]

There were NOT orange feet and bills. They were exclusively pink. The Pilgrim Geese, totally unrelated had the orange. People have mixed them to sell because everyone breeding has waiting lists and at 50.00 per bird in a dead economy thats a small fortune.

I have only a couple of people on my waiting list. All of my birds came from Serina81, who took over Tom Walkers flock.

 

[Blackhorsehill]

When I spoke to Mark See (who I got mine from), he said the flight feathers will be tipped in grey on the gander if he's heterozygous for saddleback/pied. I don't know if that's something just with his birds or something he's consistently seen. Never got to speak with him again about it.

This is on the adult birds, right?

 

[AuroraSprings]

Yes, he was referring to the adult males.


New question:

I officially had 7 hatch, but two got smushed to death by the moms. Not sure how that happened. Never seen it before. CTP are usually SOO gentle with their babies. However, all of them - included the dead ones - look like females. This will be the THIRD year of ALL females. Weird. Some have light colored bills, some dark colored bills. All seem to be solid, but some have darker down and darker bills than the others. Any thoughts?

P.S. Serina I think I need to talk to you about what gender you send us, LOL.

 

[Serina81]

The lighter colored and darker colored bills (as well as down) is how you identify the gender. The darker are the female, the lighter are the male. You can tell the difference between solid and saddleback with both male and female, but it's a lot easier on the females since they have darker coloring. The solids generally don't have splotches of dark, the saddlebacks do. The easiest way to tell a saddleback is if it has grey on its head then a yellow neck and grey again. It takes some practice and I even mix them up a bit after doing it for years.

I have had mommas squash their babies. I think it's a new mom thing as my older girls have never done that since I've had them (they were older when I bought them)

Aurorasprings, why don't you post some pics and we'll try to identify them?

 

[Serina81]

There were NOT orange feet and bills. They were exclusively pink. The Pilgrim Geese, totally unrelated had the orange. People have mixed them to sell because everyone breeding has waiting lists and at 50.00 per bird in a dead economy thats a small fortune.

Greatergrace, I'm not sure exactly what you mean about people mixing them to sell. Could you explain that statement? Cotton Patch seem to originally have had pink feet (although an origination point is hard to pin down with landrace breed) and then in the mid 1900s when farmers stopped using geese to weed cotton fields, the geese were sold off and only maintained by a few farmers. Some of them kept them in pens with pilgrim geese since they look so similar and so today's cotton patch goose sometimes has mixed genetics. That is why we cull for pilgrim traits, so that we can decrease the mixed genetics.

As for $50 a bird being a small fortune, I totally disagree. Fifty bucks is only a few bags of feed. If someone can't afford $50 for an extremely rare goose, I am concerned that they can't care for it either. $50 is the going rate for rare breeds of geese and the cotton patch is just as good and cool as the sebastopol. What does it say about a rare breed if it is priced significantly below market value? It says it isn't as good and people lose interest. You value what you pay for. Plus, a landrace breed is ideally maintained by farmers and for a profit. What better way to maintain the breed characteristics then to provide a breed which farmers can make a healthy profit from and who actually use them for farming?