Many inexperienced poultry farmers, deciding to breed geese on their backyard farm, often ask themselves the question: "How to distinguish a goose from a gander?" Indeed, until a certain age, birds differ little in appearance. But people who have been breeding these birds for a long time have several secrets.
Instructions
Step 1
Determine the sex of adult birds by their appearance. As a rule, ganders are much larger than geese, their manner of walking and keeping themselves proud, males behave aggressively and often fight.
Step 2
Geese begin to lay eggs from 275 days of age and lay up to 5-6 years. In order for the eggs to be fertilized, it is necessary to purchase one gander for 3-4 geese.
Step 3
If the goslings are still small and cannot be distinguished by their appearance, run the young animals into the water. The geese will stir up a commotion. The ganders will stretch their necks horizontally above the water and cackle loudly, while the geese will make head movements up and down, similar to bows.
Step 4
Listen to the cackle of the birds. The gander's voice is coarse, hoarse, abrupt, while the geese's voice is more drawn out and sonorous.
Step 5
But the most reliable way to determine the sex of geese is to check whether the gander has a genital organ, it is located in the cloaca. Determine the sex in one month old goslings in this way. When they grow up, it will be much more difficult to do this; examination will require a certain skill.
Step 6
Take the grown bird by the legs with your right hand and turn it over onto its back. At the same time, grab the goose's neck under your left hand. Then sit down and place the bird with its back down on the knee of the left leg so that its tail hangs down. Gently open the cloacal opening with the index and thumbs of both hands. In males, during such an examination, a kind of spiral curl will be noticeable - the penis, in females there is no such curl.
Step 7
Be careful, there is a small papilla in the folds of the lower part of the cloaca, which, due to inexperience, can easily be mistaken for a penis. But the papilla is slightly flattened and does not have clearly formed segmented divisions, in contrast to the genital organ.
Step 8
If this method of inspecting the cloaca causes you difficulty, try doing it differently. Clamp the goose head down between your legs, gently press around the cloaca with your fingers and examine it.
