Is my goose a hybrid?

[flatfoot]

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around this site for a while now but have only just signed up.

I bought a goose egg from a pet store and hatched it at home - we now have a lovely pet goose named Goliath who is 5 months old.

The people at the store told me he/she (I have no idea what gender my goose is!) is an Embden goose when I purchased the egg, but I'm not so sure if this is true.

My goose is white and has dark blue eyes, but his/her beak and feet are a light pinkish colour instead of the deep orange I've seen on Embden geese online. Also, there are about 3 or so individual feathers (in random places) that are completely dark brown/black, in contrast to all the snowy white ones around them.

Is my goose some kind of genetic anomaly, is it a crossbreed, or does it have some kind of diet deficiency? Please help, I love my baby goose and I'm worried there might be something with him/her!

 

[flatfoot]

This is Goliath in his pool, see how the beak and feet are not orange?

 

[flockman]

Embden geese can have a few dark feathers till they are a year old. I would guess that Goliath is an Embden.

 

[The goose girl]

Agree with flockman. White geese often have patches of dark feathers when they first feather out. You'll have to wait and see how Goliath looks after the next molting.

Regarding foot and bill color, I don't know. I've heard of geese loosing color due to lack of sunlight, but that's probably not an applicable explanation given your location

. It's not easy to tell color from the picture you've provided - the blue background distorts perception.

Don't worry about a genetic anomaly. The much more likely explanation is that Goliath just isn't a purebred show quality goose. He or she is probably just a happy, healthy, beautiful goose. Even show breeders only show a small fraction of their geese, because the rest of the flock doesn't meet the standards.

Also, there's a line of production Embden geese. These are bred for health and size, regardless of color. Maybe Goliath is one of them.

But just to rule out malnutrition: what do you feed Goliath? And if the answer is "mainly grass", you really don't have to worry.

 

[flatfoot]

Thank you very much, Flockman and Goose Girl. It's nice to know that Goliath's strange colouring is probably just normal Embden variation rather than illness I feed him/her lots of greens, plus there is plenty of grass all over our backyard (his favourite treat is weetbix though for some reason.)

I don't have many good photos of my goose on my phone, but this is about the clearest one I have of him where his beak and feet are visible. He/she is trying to eat my handbag

 

[flockman]

I would not be concerned by the color of feet and bill. Mine got a deeper colored beak and feet as they matured.

 

[The goose girl]

He/she is trying to eat my handbag

My goose loves handbags, too! So much that I bought her her own secondhand one. She doesn't use it much anymore, but I keep all her toys in it. And on the rare occasion when she wants to keep me company inside the house, she loves to pick out her favorite toys from the bag and play with them.

 

[livininbrazil]

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around this site for a while now but have only just signed up.

I bought a goose egg from a pet store and hatched it at home - we now have a lovely pet goose named Goliath who is 5 months old.

The people at the store told me he/she (I have no idea what gender my goose is!) is an Embden goose when I purchased the egg, but I'm not so sure if this is true.

My goose is white and has dark blue eyes, but his/her beak and feet are a light pinkish colour instead of the deep orange I've seen on Embden geese online. Also, there are about 3 or so individual feathers (in random places) that are completely dark brown/black, in contrast to all the snowy white ones around them.

Is my goose some kind of genetic anomaly, is it a crossbreed, or does it have some kind of diet deficiency? Please help, I love my baby goose and I'm worried there might be something with him/her!

Look up about cotton-patch ganders and see what you think...they have blue eyes, pink bills and feet, and the grey flanks and wing-tips etc..

 

[livininbrazil]

Look up about cotton-patch ganders and see what you think...they have blue eyes, pink bills and feet, and the grey flanks and wing-tips etc..

Just a thought...as his name´s Goliath, is he really big? If so, then he won´t be a cotton-patch.
Do you plan to get him a friend?

 

[flatfoot]

Oh my gosh, livininbrazil I think you've hit the nail on the head perfectly! Thank you so much!!

From the images on Google, those cotton patch geese look EXACTLY like Goliath. And I think that solves the gender question, too! It looks like I definitely have myself a cotton-patch gander.

In regards to his size, no he isn't very large at all. He is only named that as bit of a joke, because he shared an incubator with a little chicken named Davey haha.

Goliath is pretty small and rather sleek, which I just put down to the fact that he's still pretty young, or maybe even female.

Thank you so much for telling me about this breed, I was particularly worried about the large white spot on the tip of Goliath's beak. I worried it was malnutrition.

On another note, how weird is it that an American work goose breed wound up being sold in a tiny little Australian pet store