Sebastopol Geese For Sale

Updated 06/13/2024 –  No geese for sale, currently.

I almost never sell goslings any more, because everyone else was getting all of my best geese.  I’ve started hatching fewer, and growing them out before deciding what I want to keep and sell.  I usually put adult geese up for sale in the fall.

Please read this page before messaging me with questions.  I’m ignoring a lot of messages, because they’re wasting my time with questions that are already answered on this page.  Like I say further down the page, I’m actually a nice person, but the sheer volume of these unnecessary messages is making me cranky.

Just to get a few of the most commonly asked questions out of the way …

-Contrary to popular opinion, geese are not going to effectively guard your chicken flock.  They might provide an early warning system, but hawks are still going to get your chickens. If you have eagles, coyotes, or fox, the geese are not going to fight them off, but become some predator’s lunch.

-I do not sell singles to situations where there are no other geese. Geese are highly social and need to be kept with at least one other goose. You, or a flock of chickens, are not going to be able to adequately provide the kind of socialization needed by a goose. Because all of my geese are raised within a flock, I will not be so cruel as to remove one of them from the society of other geese.

-Geese are grazers.  They eat grass … a LOT of grass.  I cannot stress how much grass they eat.  Lot and lots of grass, and then some more grass.  Seriously,  they eat massive quantities of grass.  They are designed to thrive on grass.  I’ve found that mowing my pastures regularly provides the best quality grass.  When it gets too tall, and goes to seed, it doesn’t provide the best nutrition.  During really dry spells, I’ve had geese strip a pasture pretty bare, so I resort to watering with an impulse sprinkler when things get too dry.  In the winter, the geese will continue to graze in the pasture, as long as there is no snow cover, and I also provide them with grass hay.  They won’t touch alfalfa hay, which makes sense, considering it’s a high protein hay.  The geese know what they need.  I’m always surprised at how little of the grass hay they go through.  It’s amazing how much they are able to scavenge from the pasture in winter.

Geese will eat some weeds, but tend to leave most of them alone.  They are crazy about dandelions, which seem to be their all time favorite weed.  If you drive past my place in the spring, the yard around my house is a sea of yellow, but nerry a yellow speck can be seen out in the goose pastures.  They also like chickweed.  I have seen them eat plantain, but I’ve noticed it’s only the females after they’ve finished incubating a nest, and sometimes goslings on a major growth spurt.  Considering that plantain is an accumulator (long tap root that pulls minerals like calcium and iron from the soil and stores it in the plant’s leaves), this actually makes a lot of sense.  In the summer, I chop up the extra cucumbers from my garden, and give them to the geese.  They also get the windfall from my apple trees in the fall.

My geese get a small ration of grain every evening when I lock them in the barn for the night.   It’s a 12% protein horse feed that is mostly oats with a very small amount of corn (300 lbs of corn to the ton).  Geese should not be fed high protein poultry feeds as a significant part of their diet, and they will get too fat on corn.  I have much more to say about feeding geese, and maybe some day I’ll get around to writing something more about it.

Policies

About My Breeding Program
I’m of the opinion that American breeders have so agressively bred Sebastopols for curl, that they’ve sacrificed wing quality.  I’ve even heard some breeders say messy wings just go along with the breed. I disagree. It’s entirely possible to breed curly Sebastopols with nicely formed wings. To that end, I use European style smooth breasted Sebatopol geese in my breeding program, with a view to improving wing shape and overall feathering.  While twisted wing tip is a prevalent issue among the American birds, it’s not an issue in the European birds.  The occasional messy wing will show up in my birds from time to time, but for the most part, I’m producing curly birds with wings that tuck neatly.  Personally, I love the smooths, and think they’re very handsome birds.  Unlike the curly birds, the smooths can get a little lift (thanks to straight, strong primary flight feathers), and it’s not uncommon to see mine take a low swoop across the pasture. However, they prefer to stay with the flock, and don’t usually try to fly over my fences. About the only time I’ve had an issue with a bird flying a fence, is if I try to separate it from the flock, or in fleeing a threat.