Oddly enough mine haven't done that. The mother Pilgrim, Nimbo, has and started with more flesh toned legs and feet but her bill is orange. I know not ideal for the breed. Her mate has nice bright orange legs and it seemed to pass to most of the babies. They started and are finishing with orange. Albeit they did start out a bit more of a softer orange and are getting brighter.
Speaking of coloring my gander Cirrus had perfect coloring for a Pilgrim gander till this current molt he is doing. He now has one dark feather (flight) and much more of the soft grey splash. Before he had about 4 feathers or part of a feather that were a soft grey that were visible with more grey under the wings. Anyone else see color shift in the males as the molt after the first years?
I´m going to prattle....
Pilgrims should have orange bills, orange feet.
I never noticed mine looking pink, but then I only have what I refer to as pilgrim-type, or common geese, or auto-sexing geese..they also have slightly pinkish feet, their bills are orange-pink.
This is the way I look at it:
Grow developed the Pilgrim the way he wanted them. Walker has developed the cotton-patch the way he wanted them and remembered them from the locality in his youth. However, these breeds in all probability have been developed from the auto-sexing birds in Europe. The birds in Europe will have pink/pink-and-orange/orange bills. and the same with the legs too, coming from the greylags. Blah blah..
Now, in England, and I expect the same thing happens in other countries, the vacuum cleaner is often referred to as a Hoover, being the brand-name, but now is often used to refer to all of them...
So, when I refer to my geese on these threads, I´ll often use the name pilgrim, as it´s commonly known, but I very much doubt they´ve come from Grow´s birds. They´ve most likely come from another source, being plenty, of the auto-sexing birds either from the states, or europe, that developed along their own little lines quietly in some huge farms etc.....here they´re simply referred to as common geese.
We´re bound to get some differences in colour of bill, legs, etc, depending on the roots of the birds we have.
At the end of the day, all of these types of birds seem to be delightful, gentle, calm.....qualities that would be needed in the old farms that raised them so many generations back.
Hence, there´s bound to be some slight difference in the 'pilgrim'-type geese that are around, maybe not up to the pilgrim standard, but maybe not actually descended from Grow´s pilgrims as such.......
Well, that´s my theory on it. I´m very interested in the history of auto-sexing breeds, and I´ve read a lot of others´ theories on it too.
