Need 2 Female American Buff Goslings

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

I tried just a week too late for some of Holderread's stock. That said, we were very apprehensive about jumping in and showing our A Buffs until we saw geese on exhibition at the state fair and at Shawnee in December. There were A Buffs ar Shawnee, too. We left both show feeling not the least ashamed of our birds. I would have been very comfortale putting them up against any of the birds at either show. Might not have won the whole thing, but we wouldn't have embarrassed ourselves, either. I know what I consider the main faults in my flock to be and want to improve upon it. (So does Metzer Farm, I'm sure!)

Selection of a breed should be based on feed conversion, size, and facilies available. If anyone is looking strictly for meat, the birds do not have to be pure, but if there are too many extras come spring, they're better just sold a young as possible. Goslings don't stay "fluffy and cute" for long. After 2 weeks, they get to looking mighty awkward and some downright ugly. I love them, but, then, I'm just not right.

 

[Omniskies]

I've ordered American Buffs from Ideal before, thinking that even if I had to process half of them the price was too good to pass up.

Anything I didn't process I sold as a mutt. They were beyond horrible.

Sometimes you are getting a great deal and it's worth it. Other times you not only get what you pay for, but you get the proverbial pipe to the stomach again and again for thinking you could save that much money.

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

I would avoid Ideal for Buffs as well. They breed for quantity alone. That's their business. The geese are small.

 

[Metzer Farms]

"Olive Hill" had it exactly correct. Goslings hatch very close to 50% male and 50% female. If we allowed customers to order extra females, we would have extra males with no home at the end of the day. One year we tried to offer females only at double the price of straight run (to cover the extra male that would have to be put down). This was not received well so we discontinued the offer. We understand the desire for extra females, we just can't afford to sell lots of females and then put down the matching males.
Thank you,
John Metzer

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

Males aren't as popular, but I think that when it concerns breeds that are becoming scarce, males are very important, too. I have some that I would not show, but I'm not willing to cast off anything that doesn't have potential. There don't seem to be that many lines to choose from and relieving myself of excess ganders is throwing away genes I may need back in the future. I prefer to keep them around at least until I know what they produce regularly.

 

[Olive Hill]

Kathy, your approach isn't uncommon and it seems the more small, hobby farms that pop up dedicated to the ALBC's watchlist breeds the more widespread it becomes. Unfortunately, it is extremely inefficient and misguided from both a business and animal stewardship perspective.

On the business side, additional ganders that are not being actively used for breeding are resource vacuums. They consume feed, take up space in facilities, add time to daily chores which translates to additional manpower hours required, and during the breeding season (and sometimes year-round) require separate facilities entirely -- facilities that must then be added to the farm's overhead and offset in the bottom line.

On the animal stewardship side of things, not only can excess ganders result in an increase in fighting, overbreeding and animal inflicted injury -- all of which also goes right back to the business side of things, as it requires the expenditure of finite resources in order to cope -- but the collecting of various "lines" and "genes" is actually counterintuitive to the responsible breeding of rare animals. Of course, it's debatable as to how "rare" the American Buff (and all other listed poultry) actually are, but even if we are to assume the ALBC is accurate and that American Buffs, being on the Critically Endangered list, are extremely rare you'd be doing the breed a much bigger favor to develop and refine a consistent line using a shallow set of genes than to breed willy nilly, incorporating as many genes as you can.

John, it's nice to see you here. Welcome to BYC!

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

Olive Hill,
I understand what you're saying. We keep commercial Toulouse for sales of day-old goslings, eggs, and table birds to offset piddling around with breeding the Buffs.
I grew up on a DHIA dairy farm in upstate NY with registered stock. That was back when small family farms were common and there was a different approach to farming. I'm no stranger to maintaining accurate "herd records", either. I confess that I retain that same "small farm" mentality (and dairy language). Two of us work this 15 acres full-time with the full knowledge that we will never make money at it. One of us is working under duress. We're just starting out. Everyone starts somewhere. And it's Texas. And they are geese....Actually we didn't go into this with the idea of becoming breeders (only one of us), and after we spent the first year "keeping geese", we've transitioned to "managing geese'. Would you consider mentoring? You have obviously much more experience than I. Words are cold and I want you to know that I sincerely do not intend to come across as contentious or facetious. "Insert olive branch emoticon here" Selective breeding is not an overnight endeavor in any species.

My idea of excess ganders and yours may be different. I started with that: 5 each, 2 of which are already out. We only got 2 geese (7 total). Right there we had a problem with excess. And we are wading with a very shallow gene pool indeed, my friend, if I do say so myself. My toenails aren't even damp! We didn't have adequate initial female resources to draw from. We made our own. The second generation had a good number of really beautiful geese, but they were mostly too small by the standard, and we kept no ganders. This past spring we got more of each to choose from, some improvement and some will be culls. Market's better in the spring! We sell the culls as crosses. We do cull, but we also need some new blood. I wouldn't call it willy-nilly, either, just too close for comfort at the 3rd generation. I now have 20 females, out of which I must cull 3 for faults, and possibly 3 more if we gain nothing from them this year.

Let me ask you this: How long do you feel is an appropriate length of time before you can accurately gauge what traits a particular gander (or goose) is going to reliably pass along before you say "He (or she)'s out!!!"? Do you give him another chance to breed with an alternative goose/gander with complimentary traits? I got 4 potential keepers for ganders this past year. They look good, but will they produce? Won't know that until it happens and half of that will depend on who they mate with. Overall, the ratio isn't bad, but linebreeding only goes so far. We've improved what we started with. The question is: Can we realistically develop a line of our own and maintain it without going "outside"? I don't think so. It sure didn't work with cattle. We had 2 herd sires for 100 cows and we used AI as well, and that was before breeding SuperCows became fashionable. Haven't seen that option open yet. I'm not a geneticist, and don't have a class nearby available. I'm just trying to interpret the standard against what I've got. That's why we've decided to get the birds out and show them to someone who better knows how to apply the standard.

Forgive me, I have a strange and often misunderstood sense of humor. I worked for the Government far too long: I'm just not right. PM me if you would like to expound or offer guidance. I think the forum may not be the appropriate place to continue the discussion. I would have sent you a private message, but did not want to intrude. Thank you! Bracing for another temperature roller coaster tonight here. At least it will not be sustained freezing temperatures this time. We didn't even get any mail delivery here last Tue-Fri. Never had that happen before! Every available grain of sand and "salt substitute" in this state went to the roads in and around the Superbowl. God bless us, every one!

 

[Omniskies]

I've never had a problem with getting rid of extra males. And as far as geese go, even the expensive ones are, well, made of meat. Any ganders that aren't sold in 15-30 weeks can become a Christmas goose.

As for "collecting genes willy-nilly," I'm a firm believer in doing that. I have collected a number of bloodlines for my Pilgrim flock. Now that I have a sizeable flock I will be closing it off and working with what I have now(I may still try to include Paul Ashton's lines to a portion of my flock, but that's it). However, I'll be closing off a flock of 25 birds out of a minimum half dozen lines with plenty of older animals to pair up and shuffle around now that I have seen how they matured (something that can take three, four, or five years with geese). I have heard a lot of complaints about the overall fertility levels of Pilgrim geese, and it was a problem I experienced when I first started raising them. It has become a non-issue; something I feel had a lot to do with obsessively gathering diverse lines for a few years before being satisfied with what I have now.

As long as you have enough genetic diversity to begin with and you know who was bred to whom then a closed flock doesn't present a lot of problems. But when you are trying to develop different lines out of a pair of geese you can run into some problems (with linebreeding it is technically possible to develop a lot of lines using a pair of rabbits, but it takes a long time and a lot of very specific breeding to make happen - breeding that may not be beneficial to the quality of your stock).