The goose is a massive poultry that is often found not only on specialized farms, but also on the farmsteads of rural residents or even summer residents. It is profitable to keep them because they gain weight quickly, and the meat differs in taste and characteristics. But to breed poultry, you need to know how to quickly distinguish a gander from a goose, because this is important for the competent formation of a herd.
Purposes of sex determination
It may be necessary to distinguish a male from a female in the following situations:
- Geese are raised for meat.It is advantageous to keep ganders because they are initially larger in size and, as a result of fattening, you can get a carcass of greater weight. In addition, ganders have strong immunity, therefore, they get sick less often and are less susceptible to infections. However, males are aggressive and, when kept in large numbers, can start fights.
- The bird is kept for its eggs. In this case, the bulk of the population should be females, but there should be a sufficient number of males to ensure normal fertilization of the eggs. There are four geese for one gander.
- Geese are kept to raise chicks for sale. The previous point and the need to know the sex of the goslings will be important here, because the buyer will want to know what kind of bird he is purchasing. Geese are peaceful, calm, and flexible, while males exhibit opposite character traits. For breeding, it is necessary to keep more geese than males.
Externally, ganders are not very different from geese, especially in some breeds, so novice poultry farmers will need to learn the exact methods of recognizing the sex of poultry.
What does a male look like?
Ganders are larger and more massive than females, they have a voluminous body and a long and strong neck. Their behavior is more active and even aggressive. Males are often brighter and more saturated in color, but their plumage pattern is the same as that of geese. Geese do not have such noticeable, radical differences as in drakes and ducks. But you can try to find out the gender by the shade of the fluff. There is an opinion that in ganders it is yellowish, and in geese it is grayish.
Appearance of the female
Geese are 10-15 percent smaller in size than males, and also weigh 1-3 kilograms less.They have a more graceful rounded body, a short and thin neck, and a small head. Geese are docile and less aggressive than ganders, but, if necessary, they can harshly punish the enemy.
They are excellent mothers and have the instinct to incubate and care for their offspring. In some breeds of geese, females have a beak color that differs from the shade and shape of the male.
How to distinguish a gander from a goose
There are several ways to find out the sex of geese - adults and chicks. Each of them has the right to life, allows you to find out with a certain accuracy whether the person in front of you is a gander or a goose.
Scientific method
This method is based on the differences in the structure of the genital organs of males and females. The situation is complicated by the fact that in birds, and in geese in particular, the reproductive organs are hidden and located in the cloaca. More accurate data can be obtained from adult geese with formed sex characteristics, if this was not possible based on other characteristics. The gander's penis has the appearance of a small curl measuring from 3 to 7 centimeters. You can see it if you turn the bird on its back, fix it, carefully open the cloaca and examine it. The goose's genitals have the appearance of a rounded bulge.
When examining, you need to take into account that the bird will not like this procedure. She will not only resist, but can also cause significant damage to the person and herself. Therefore, you need to hold the geese firmly, but carefully, preferably together.
Gosling activity
From the first days of life, the goslings' belonging to a certain sex can be determined by their behavior, of course, with some degree of probability. Male chicks behave more actively and belligerently, scream louder and more often, and can compete with fellow tribesmen for food or the best place in the house. They stretch their necks and turn their heads, while geese can be recognized by their more delicate demeanor and calmness. Guskies are less noisy; they only vocalize when they are hungry or something is really annoying them.
But such differences do not “work” on all geese. For example, chicks of the Linda breed behave equally calmly and peacefully, regardless of their particular gender. You need to use other methods with them.
Gosling sizes
You can recognize a gander by its size even in young animals, and not just in adults. Males, even in infancy, are initially larger than females and behave differently. Ganders hold their heads high, stretch their necks, behave importantly, sedately, but easily move from calm to aggression.
Geese are initially smaller; not only do they have a smaller body, but also a shorter neck. They usually walk with their heads down and have less aggressive behavior and motor activity.
Clearly gender differences are expressed in birds of breeds in which ganders in adulthood are larger in size than geese, for example, in gray Kholmogory. But this is not an accurate indicator, because developmentally delayed males may be the same size as females.
The goslings are frightened
Evolution has led to the fact that the behavior of males and females has noticeable differences.In the event of an obvious or hidden threat or an unexpected situation, a sharp sound, males look for the source of the threat and take the appropriate position, and females try to hide and cover their offspring.
Geese behave in exactly the same way. If you frighten them, even one-month-old chicks will show characteristic signs of gender. The ganders will crane their necks and scan the area in search of the source of the noise, while the geese will crouch and try to hide from potential danger. This method makes it possible to distinguish the sex of birds, but it should not be abused, since fright negatively affects the nervous system and general well-being of the chicks.
Bungee
This technique makes it possible to determine what sex the gosling is, even at an early age. But it requires a person to act confidently and calmly, to be careful and careful, since one can accidentally harm the birds.
With this method, the chick is taken by the legs, turned and lifted up. Then you need to sharply lower it down. At this moment, the geese’s vestibular apparatus, which is responsible for the sense of balance, is activated. When moving down, the gander will try to stretch its neck and bend it in the direction of the tail, and the goose will react sluggishly, only shaking its head.
By finding out how the behavior of ganders and goose differs when turning over and moving, you can find out whether the person in front of us is a boy or a girl. But this method, like others, does not provide a 100% guarantee of determining the sex of geese.
You can use all the methods in everyday life to determine the sex differences of poultry, but the scientific method turns out to be reliable and accurate. It gives a clear picture of whether the gander or goose being studied is a chick or an adult, but the difficulty is that the bird will resist and “pinch” the cloaca.If the test fails the first time, do not persistently repeat it, causing pain and discomfort to the goose. It is better to wait one or a couple of days and let the birds calm down, then the test will give an accurate result.
