might be a stupid qestion but its short (crossbreed?)

[Evelle]

HELLO!!!
so i have a friend who wants to know if her chinese goose will/can have babys with her gander Embden
i couldnt answer it so i need some goose experts

 

[gamefowl guy]

Yes, you can cross goose breeds just as you can chickens.

And you can cross Swan-goose descendants (ones with knobs) to greylag descendants (pretty much all domestic ones without).

It is theorized that that is how some breeds came into existence, such as the blue steinbacher, and possibly how (in particular) the blue steinbacher got it's unusually blue color.

 

[Evelle]

why do we not see it common in nature.. such as community ponds with different swans and geese.??

 

[hossfeathers]

why do we not see it common in nature.. such as community ponds with different swans and geese.??

Frequently, different breeds segregate themselves, and apparently don't find other breed attractive if one of their own breed is around. Probably mostly genetic with some behavior/imprinting involved.

Obviously this is not perfect - even goats and sheep will breed with each other if no male of their own is available.​

 

[Yetti]

I think nature racially profiles. that way it takes advantage of strong traits and passes them off to the next generation. the only time I could see this getting skewed is when the population of a particular breed is left with very few individuals. then nature by virtue alone would seek out other means to procreate itself.

 

[gamefowl guy]

It depends on how closely related and gentically compatible two species are whether they can 1, breed and 2, produce fertile offspring capable of reproducing. It is like a mechanism nature has so that there isn't cross-species breeding to a damaging extent.

Swans and geese are different species, and are incompatible for crossing to my knowledge.

Then you have Canada geese and Greylag, which can cross but produce sterile offspring. Why Greylag and Swan geese (Swan geese are a species of goose, nothing to do with swans) can cross I am not sure, but it probably has something to do with chromosome count.

for example, mules are the sterile offspring of a male donkey mated onto a female horse. A horse and donkey are in the same family, the equine family, but each has a different number of chromosome sets, a donkey something like 54 and a horse something like 57. They can successfully reproduce together, but due to the incompatible chromosome numbers the offspring are sterile.

Like chickens and turkeys - people have successfully hatched crosses, but it took thousands of eggs and the few that hatched died before maturity. It is nature at work.

 

[Evelle]

Quote:
this is why i really couldn't answer her correctly.. i didnt know if they are a differant "species" of geese or if they were just breed like a barred rock and a rhodeisland red.
so they can cross but if she has a goose and a gander embden (which she does) the gander wont touch the chinese??
i guess it wasnt as short as i thought

 

[Kevin565]

Quote:
this is why i really couldn't answer her correctly.. i didnt know if they are a differant "species" of geese or if they were just breed like a barred rock and a rhodeisland red.
so they can cross but if she has a goose and a gander embden (which she does) the gander wont touch the chinese??
i guess it wasnt as short as i thought

All domestic breeds come from Greylag Geese except Chinese and Africans to the best of my knowledge. Having two of the same breed is no guarantee that they won't cross breed. They most likely will. The only way to prevent this would be to keep them in different pens. Also most feral geese at the ponds here cross breed. I've seen Embeden and Africans cross breed so it is possible.

 

[Sean S.]

As hossfeathers said above, I think they will breed together as they do not have one of their own. But they do seem to have a way of seeking out their own. We had two embden goslings that we introduced to our flock this summer, for the first couple of weeks the hung out with our sebastopols, but after that they ended up with the embden gang with in a short period of time. So nature seems to have a way of sorting the different breeds, but with no other mates available, I think they will be fine.

 

[extraordinaryfowl]

Quote:
this is why i really couldn't answer her correctly.. i didnt know if they are a differant "species" of geese or if they were just breed like a barred rock and a rhodeisland red.
so they can cross but if she has a goose and a gander embden (which she does) the gander wont touch the chinese??
i guess it wasnt as short as i thought

Yes, as the above quote says the Embeden and Chinese are 2 different species, but they are capable of producing fertile offspring when mated. I'm not whether they would rather breed with their own or not, but they will 100% breed. That is how some breeds such as the Steinbacher were created.