Meat geese?

[extraordinaryfowl]

Hew might consider selling them as pairs - unlike chickens since it is best to pair geese people want an even number of geese to ganders - but whatever works!

Just remember geese are gentle creatures and unlike chickens they will remember anything that happens for quite a while, good or bad. Good luck!

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

Embdens I've heard are good for meat. I raise Pilgrims and they get pretty big too

 

[DUCKGIRL89]

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well, its really up to him

he jus asked me to ask you all for advice

 

[RAREROO]

So for auto sexing, you can do pilgrims if you want larger geese or Shetlands if you want them to e smaller.

Or you can do a sexlink cross using the buff gene by using a Buff ( American, African, Touloose, or Pomeranian) gander. American buffs from a hatchery would be the easiest if the four to find. And breed him too Grey geese like toulouse and that will give buff females and grey males.

 

[DUCKGIRL89]

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thats a great idea. only he wants them pure bred

and wants the ganders to be white for easy pluck.

 

[RAREROO]

Oh ok. But white plumage wouldn't be any easier to pluck than colored plumage, the differece is you just wouldn't see white pin feather spots in the carcass as easially as you would the little dark spots from colored plumage. But if he wants auto sexling with white ganders then I guess pilgrims or shetlands would be the options.

 

[Oregon Blues]

It sounds to me like Pilgrims will do what you want.

Naturally, I like Pomeranians the best, but they are a bit difficult to sex, so wouldn't work well for you. Also, decent quality Pomeranians are very difficult to come by.

If you butcher during the short time windows when they are fully feathered, the pin feathers are not an issue. Even without pins, plucking is a huge job. It takes us a full 30 minutes with 2 people working to process a goose and that's with a mechanical plucker and duck wax. It's worth it, though.

 

[extraordinaryfowl]

My Cotton Patch are auto-sexing and extremely easy to tell apart after they have fluffed out - Although tracking down good stock will probably be more expensive then pilgrims, as Cotton Patch are a lot more rare - But to me it is worth it. Normandy and Shetland are also smaller auto-sexing breeds.

I have a friend who used to breed extremely high-quality Emdens and he said the males I believe it was had a dark spot on their head most of the time.

Vent-sexing is also an option - it is not quite as hard as it is with chickens.

 

[RAREROO]

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Yep, and Metzer Farms has a "Duckumentary" on their site that shows how Embdens can be somewhat color sexed but its not 100% and it also teaches about vent sexling.

 

[extraordinaryfowl]

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Yep, and Metzer Farms has a "Duckumentary" on their site that shows how Embdens can be somewhat color sexed but its not 100% and it also teaches about vent sexling.

Yes, I saw the video John Metzer made about vent sexing. I think he could've gone into a little more detail, but it still was an excellent lesson!