cotton patch, American Buff, or Pilgrim?

[Parront]

Interesting choices. I have not had any of those breeds, but I would like to have the auto-sexing Pilgrim geese. You need to have a plan for the males, since you will not be eating them yourself. If you hatch, and you can tell the males right away, you could sell them while they are little and cute! (Or to those who want a meat bird).

 

[Sierra G]

Since one of your uses for geese is weeding I'd vote for cotton patch for the folliwing reasons.

1. They were bred for weeding and are good at it. Although, like all geese, if you want them to eat broadleaf weeds you need to feed them some while the geese are still young.

2. Being smaller they can still be guard geese, but will probably be less aggressive with your other birds. Let them be brooded by or with ducks to help with that. I always add three duck eggs to any batch of goose eggs I'm hatching. Not only does it get them to accept smaller birds, it gives them buddies if I have a bad hatch.

3. Cotton patch are endangered, but still worth preserving. To a lesser extent the same is true of pilgrims, but they've become very popular in recent years.

And 4. If I decide to start a flock of CP I'll know who to ask for eggs.

Seriously though, all the breeds you listed are great. Get started with geese and you'll find that goose math is real too, even if you don't usually tell yourself "I won't even notice just one more."

 

[PeterPraetoria]

All are great choices! For myself, I would go for the cotton patch, simply because they are the rarest and need to be preserved. But the other two breeds are larger and probably less prone to attack from aerial predators.

Another thing to consider is that weeder geese need to be trained as goslings to accept broad leaved weeds. Otherwise they will just eat the grass and leave the weeds behind.

Are goose eggs really a thing? I've tried them and didn't like them much. Very gritty.

Out of curiosity, how do you train them to the broad leaf weeds? Do you just feed weeds to them manually, or put them in a pen just with weeds..?

 

[laboroflove]

Which breed did you end up going with? I'm currently trying to decide between the CP and the Buff. I thought they were about the same size though...

 

[dheltzel]

I raise Pilgrims because I heard from CP enthusiasts that they are generally a bit larger and more aggressive than Pilgrims, so I'm confused by your saying they are smaller. CP are not standardized at all, so perhaps you have a small line in your area.
As for laying. My 3 year old hen laid 46 eggs last year! So a productive line of Pilgrims can be excellent layers. Aggression has been very manageable for me, but I remove every egg as it is laid. Some of the young ganders that were raised by me are willing to charge toward me and hiss, but I have taught them it is no fun for them to get too close, as I am very capable of dominating them in front of the ladies.
I have only had Pilgrims, so I can't make actual comparisons, but I like them and think they would do well for you. They can be hard to find and expensive from hatcheries. I have shipped a lot of goslings with perfect results, so don't hesitate to buy goslings and have them shipped if you can't get what you want locally.

 

[FoodFreedomNow]

As a Pilgrim breeder, I suspect that there is a fair amount of confusion in distinguishing the breeds, which may lead to possible crossing of Pilgrim and CP stock because of their similar physical traits. With the obvious exception of the saddleback coloration found only in CP, the two breeds (to the untrained eye) can look nearly identical.

According to the Livestock Conservancy, the two breeds should be similar in size/weight, with CP weighing in at around 14lb(M)/12lb(F) and Pilgrim at 14/13. LC's goose breed chart shows that the Pilgrim is a significantly better layer than the CP, if that's important to you.

I've been working with this breed for several years now and have - to my chagrin - been sold hatching eggs and birds that turned out to be either poor examples of the breed, suspected mixes, or another breed (Toulouse also have somewhat similar coloring), early on in my foray into raising the breed. If you're looking locally, I caution you to be very careful about ensuring that you're getting true Pilgrim stock, and to buy only from reputable sources.

That said, I find Pilgrims to be fascinating birds and an asset to a small farm. None of my birds, even during breeding season, is aggressive, though they can be quite protective of nests and goslings (which I think is a positive attribute).

 

[dheltzel]

As a Pilgrim breeder, I suspect that there is a fair amount of confusion in distinguishing the breeds, which may lead to possible crossing of Pilgrim and CP stock because of their similar physical traits. With the obvious exception of the saddleback coloration found only in CP, the two breeds (to the untrained eye) can look nearly identical.

According to the Livestock Conservancy, the two breeds should be similar in size/weight, with CP weighing in at around 14lb(M)/12lb(F) and Pilgrim at 14/13. LC's goose breed chart shows that the Pilgrim is a significantly better layer than the CP, if that's important to you.

I've been working with this breed for several years now and have - to my chagrin - been sold hatching eggs and birds that turned out to be either poor examples of the breed, suspected mixes, or another breed (Toulouse also have somewhat similar coloring), early on in my foray into raising the breed. If you're looking locally, I caution you to be very careful about ensuring that you're getting true Pilgrim stock, and to buy only from reputable sources.

That said, I find Pilgrims to be fascinating birds and an asset to a small farm. None of my birds, even during breeding season, is aggressive, though they can be quite protective of nests and goslings (which I think is a positive attribute).

I concur. Since both are autosexing and interbreed freely, with the autosexing trait staying intact, it is hard to sort them out. According to the SOP, Pilgrims ought to have orange bills. CP generally have pink bills, but there is no SOP for them. To further complicate matters, the bill color seems to change over time and is almost certainly a combination of several genes.
IMO, they are effectively the same breed, with the pied CP simply a color variant. Any differences between them are less than the differences I see in the various strains of Copper Marans chickens, and they certainly are not giving new names to those strains. I know some CP people will take issue with that statement, and you are certainly entitled to have a different opinion. CP have been picked up by the livestock conservancy and given a certain amount of "hype" there, but that does not make them worthy of separate breed status. The APA would be a better judge of that and they are very unlikely to ever accept CP as a new breed, given the lack of distinction between them and the already accepted Pilgrims.
I do not show my birds, but I still try to breed to the standard where possible. Most of my breeds are not in the APA's SOP (so I am certainly not an APA "purist"), but where there is little to differentiate breeds, as in this case, I prefer to go with the ones that have a breed standard until I find a reason not to.