The African and Chinese goose thread!!

[bargain]

Just joining in here. We have had geese for now 6 years and mainly they are for weeding our gardens and enriching the soil. I love their eggs, hubby not! LOL. But he will eat what the eggs are baked or cooked in, just not a scrambled egg or omelet...... So we started with a flock of White Chinese and Brown Chinese ..... We then downsized to only White Chinese and because our flock is large we are about to sell off half of them as we are trying to keep our feed cost in line.

For those of you who breed your geese, if you are interested in fertile eggs, what is the ratio that you maintain for fertility. I want to be sure to keep enough males that the eggs are fertile next spring. Thanks Oh and here's a pic of some of our Brown Chinese we had.............

 

[can you hear me now?]

My question is if you guys use them for weeding gardens, how do you stop them from eating say tomato and corn plants.

 

[kimberly35042]

I don't think you can. My geese eat weeds along with whatever else happens to look good. Hosta are a favorite. The gerber daisies were mowed down. Daylilies were unscathed-- go figure.

 

[bargain]

My question is if you guys use them for weeding gardens, how do you stop them from eating say tomato and corn plants.

Good question, we put them in with the corn plants after the stalks are about 15 inches tall. The tomatoes are off limits for them. They are excellent at weeding garlic. So it depends on the plant and we are going to be trying them some in the orchard around trees this year. We watch them EVERY so carefully and since our garden space is in many areas, this helps. They did a great job with the asparagus, but unfortunately lost the asparagus to an unexpected very hard freeze!

 

[RURU]

Hey Kim! Tell me about them eating hostas. I kept telling people on the other forum they ate all my hostas I had here. Told them to watch out they will wipe them out. They say the eat weeds and grass, guess these things they are eating are weeds huh!

Mine also like to eat the bark off of new trees. The killed my new pink weeping crab apple tree.

That was a $130.00 meal for them.

Kim wanted to let you know Nesie is doing fine we had goslings fro her but sold them all because they were all smooth breasted.
Dillian was in the sun grooming yesterday and Kim I can swear I see CREAM feathers coming in on him in the tail and on the wings, not buff but Cream!! So he must be a Cream Splash? Has anyone ever had a cream splash???

 

[bargain]

Hey Kim! Tell me about them eating hostas. I kept telling people on the other forum they ate all my hostas I had here. Told them to watch out they will wipe them out. They say the eat weeds and grass, guess these things they are eating are weeds huh!

Mine also like to eat the bark off of new trees. The killed my new pink weeping crab apple tree.

That was a $130.00 meal for them.

Kim wanted to let you know Nesie is doing fine we had goslings fro her but sold them all because they were all smooth breasted.
Dillian was in the sun grooming yesterday and Kim I can swear I see CREAM feathers coming in on him in the tail and on the wings, not buff but Cream!! So he must be a Cream Splash? Has anyone ever had a cream splash???

They cannot "free range a garden" unless you have some way of watching and knowing how they eat and have gardens separated by AGE/kind of plant. I find our sebbies are "tougher" on plants, etc than the chinese geese. I still have a question

Please........For the white chinese geese, how many boys do I need to keep say 6 females fertile. I had been keeping "pairs" but I really need fewer geese and would like to move to 2 males, For both noisiness, feed issues, care. Do you think that would work??? thanks.

 

[zooweemama]

Oh my gosh these guys grow fast! I hatched 1 gosling from my African pair. I had to find her a gosling buddy fast. I found one 2 weeks older than her. SO they have been buddies. When we moved them outside during the day my African pair would hang out by the pen with them. After 2 weeks - I released them with the geese. Oh my sweet goodness. My yearling pair totally adopted them!! They sleep in the coop with ducks and the geese. Thriving!


(my 'daddy' african)






(my 'mama' african in the far right corner)
It has been SO fun watching them integrate. The geese ALL stick together. A very young Canada goose got lost in our yard and followed our gander around. We couldn't find the parents so we just let her stay. My geese basically took her in. She is almost feathered now (I hope she flies away lol we don't mess with her). And then when we added in our two babies- they took them in too. My geese are heavy foragers and have def taught the young geese to forage- it's been amazing. Ducks are horrible at this. They are mean to any newcomers where as the geese were actually welcoming. SO weird. Anyway wanted to share a few snaps of how my Africans took in some babies.

 

[can you hear me now?]

Very cool, we got an African pair from a neighbor that I gave a rooster to awhile back. They are just now getting feathers and absolutely have adopted my wife. I cannot wait to get them together with my other birds.

 

[RugenerGooser]

If anybody has some brown Chinese goslings and/or even white that they are willing to ship, or perhaps ship juveniles in the cooler months, let me know. I lost Simone, one of my brown Chinese geese during the breeding season this year. Simeon is without a wife. I have some Chinese eggs in the incu, but I don't want him breeding back to those, naturally. Fortunately, he is doing well because he had the other Chinese to be with. They take care of my Pomeranian and American juveniles.

January

 

[flockman]

Oh my gosh these guys grow fast! I hatched 1 gosling from my African pair. I had to find her a gosling buddy fast. I found one 2 weeks older than her. SO they have been buddies. When we moved them outside during the day my African pair would hang out by the pen with them. After 2 weeks - I released them with the geese. Oh my sweet goodness. My yearling pair totally adopted them!! They sleep in the coop with ducks and the geese. Thriving!


(my 'daddy' african)






(my 'mama' african in the far right corner)
It has been SO fun watching them integrate. The geese ALL stick together. A very young Canada goose got lost in our yard and followed our gander around. We couldn't find the parents so we just let her stay. My geese basically took her in. She is almost feathered now (I hope she flies away lol we don't mess with her). And then when we added in our two babies- they took them in too. My geese are heavy foragers and have def taught the young geese to forage- it's been amazing. Ducks are horrible at this. They are mean to any newcomers where as the geese were actually welcoming. SO weird. Anyway wanted to share a few snaps of how my Africans took in some babies.

Very cool! My gander adopted 2 different batches of babies. He is such a good father. I agree that the geese are great with new babies. Chickens are the worst, followed by the ducks. Oh well. Gotta love the geese. I hope to hatch a few geese next spring. I supposedly have 2 female goslings for Boris. One of them started acting like a mother when she was 5 weeks old. She calls "her goslings" and makes sure they are with her. The only time she doesn't watch them is when she tries to exercise her wings. The younger goslings are nearly her size! She is 11 weeks old and they are 6 weeks old.

Is that a buff Dewlap African? Looks really nice!