Breeding Toulouse Geese: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners
Breeding Toulouse geese can be rewarding since it can provide backyard geese farmers with many benefits. For instance, Toulouse geese are ideal for eggs and meat. You can also keep these birds for pest control and companionship, courtesy of their friendly and calm temperaments.
Breeding Toulouse geese starts with picking the best Toulouse breeding stock and crafting a sound breeding plan. It would help if you also learned how to properly incubate and hatch eggs when breeding these gentle, giant geese.
Selecting Toulouse Breeding Stock
It’s wise to take your time and select the perfect Toulouse breeding stock before embarking on breeding Toulouse geese. A Toulouse breeding stock consists of male and female Toulouse geese, which serve as the parents of your future Toulouse goslings.
Breeding stock selection allows farmers to pick specific Toulouse geese to be parents of future Toulouse generations. The perfect Toulouse breeding stock should have specific desirable traits to pass to future generations for improved egg and meat production.
While selecting your Toulouse breeding stock, you should consider factors like age, performance level, physical fitness, temperament, and health. The birds you pick for your breeding stock should be young since old Toulouse geese are poor breeders.
Furthermore, you should select geese with the highest possible level of performance. Pick birds with the highest production levels regarding egg and meat production. The chosen birds shouldn’t have any physical defects, such as limping and weak bones. Farmers should pick birds with great temperaments while selecting their breeding stock.
Creating a Breeding Plan
It helps to have a sound breeding plan after selecting your breeding stock. Your breeding plan should depend on why you intend to breed Toulouse geese. For instance, if you want to breed Toulouse geese for meat production, you should select birds with high meat yields.
Your plan should also take into account the gander-to-hen ratio. Your breeding stock shouldn’t include more ganders than hens to discourage competition for hens among the dangers. Ensure every gander can access between four and five hens.
Furthermore, it would help if you decided when to breed Toulouse geese. While these Toulouse geese can breed year-round, these geese are more prolific breeders during the springtime. Planning when to breed Toulouse geese is especially vital for those in cold climates.
Geese spend plenty of time trying to keep warm during wintertime, so they have less time for mating during these cold months. A good breeding plan is vital for increased production in your future Toulouse geese flock. It also helps you produce a flock with vast genetic diversity.
Incubation and Hatching the Eggs
Incubating and hatching eggs are crucial parts of breeding Toulouse geese. After all, you can’t expect to expand your flock without incubating and hatching eggs into goslings. Geese eggs can be challenging for many farmers to incubate and hatch, unlike duck and chicken eggs.
Ideally, incubation and hatching are a preserve of the Toulouse hens. However, luck won’t always provide you with a brood when incubating and hatching Toulouse geese eggs. You can use an incubator to incubate and hatch the eggs successfully.
The ideal temperature for incubating Toulouse geese eggs should be around 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity levels are also vital while incubating and hatching Toulouse geese eggs during breeding. While humidity levels can vary significantly depending on climate, the ideal humidity levels should be around 55% for incubation.
The levels should be approximately 75% for hatching. Run your incubator to about 30% humidity while incubating and hatching eggs in a humid environment. Keep turning the eggs in the incubator thrice daily until the eggs hatch.
Raising Toulouse Goslings
Your Toulouse geese’ eggs have piped and given rise to new goslings. Meaning your breeding efforts have been rewarding. Now, you should prepare to take care of the newly hatched goslings to ensure you have offspring that is healthy and which can meet your needs. These are informative tips on how everyone breeding Toulouse goslings can raise their offspring.
- Get the best feed for the goslings-Before hatching Toulouse goslings, it’s vital to ensure the newly hatched birds have access to the best feed while they are still in their brooder. Your newly hatched Toulouse goslings need a nutritious starter feed to give them a healthy kick in their early years. The perfect feed for your goslings should have all nutrients and minerals. Toulouse goslings need a feed with a good mixture of vitamins, proteins, healthy carbs, and amino acids. Your goslings will also appreciate it when you give them special treats, such as crickets, lettuce, and mealworms. The little birds will be happy and healthy if you give them nutritious and healthy foods.
- Provide the newly hatched goslings with plenty of water– It is a known adage that goslings from all geese breeds, including those from Toulouse geese, need water to help them swallow down their food. Your newly hatched goslings should have enough water to help dip their beaks into the water after eating. They also need clean water to swim and keep cool.
- Keep the brooder warm– The brooder should always be warm for any baby birds, including goslings. The best temperature for newly hatched Toulouse goslings should be between 90 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit. You should reduce the temperatures to 10 degrees when incubating and hatching your Toulouse goslings in an incubator. You can add some heat to the incubator to keep your goslings warm by heating the incubator with one or two light bulbs, depending on the number of goslings in the incubator. A heat lamp can be an excellent warming option for the newly hatched goslings, but keeping it too close to the brooder can create a fire hazard.
- Fence your premises– Goslings are pretty curious once they mature. They will wander long distances searching for food and discovering their new home. It would help if you had a fence around your premises to ensure the goslings don’t stray too far from your premises, where they will be susceptible to foxes, raccoons, and other predators.
Caring for Adult Toulouse Geese
Your Toulouse breeding efforts will only succeed after raising newly hatched goslings to adulthood. These tips will ensure you give your adult Toulouse goslings the best care.
- Give the geese good living conditions– Your Toulouse adult geese will be hardy enough in adulthood to survive weather conditions and diseases. However, these birds will succumb to many ailments when living in unclean and dilapidated conditions. A dirty environment will expose your birds to external parasites and other health conditions that affect geese, including Toulouse geese. So, your birds must live in a clean environment to protect them from any issues arising from poor living conditions.
- Allow them to free-range– Adult Toulouse geese can enjoy a varied diet when free-ranging. They will eat plenty of plant material and also forage for water creatures when swimming in water bodies. For instance, your adult Toulouse geese will eat plenty of aquatic plants if you allow them access to the nearest water bodies. They will also eat plenty of seeds, improving their health in adulthood when they are reliable egg and meat producers.
- Protect the adult goslings from predators– The biggest challenge for free-ranging adult geese are predators. Your adult Toulouse geese will have many predators preying on them when roaming in their environment. You can keep the birds from predators by ensuring their pen is predator-proof. You can also fence your homestead to save your adult Toulouse geese from predators, especially if you have a large homestead.
Common Toulouse Geese Health Issues
These are some health issues affecting Toulouse geese during and after breeding.
- Sinusitis
- White-eye
- Coryza
- Fowl cholera
- Botulism
- Nutritional deficiency disease
Tips for Successful Breeding Toulouse Geese
Breeding and raising Toulouse geese can be lucrative and fun, particularly when a farmer chooses the right breeding stock to guarantee substantive eggs and meat yields. Farmers must follow the adequate breeding process when breeding Toulouse geese to ensure they get the best returns. These tips will help any aspiring geese raiser breed Toulouse geese.
- Always pick the perfect stocking breed-Your breeding efforts won’t succeed if you choose the wrong stocking breed. Strive to pick the best Toulouse parents to sire offspring with the best genetic traits. If you are breeding Toulouse geese for eggs, you should choose a stocking breeding that will give you more egg producers in your flock. Your breeding stock should have healthy and strong Toulouse geese to help it sire a productive flock in the future.
- Be wary of the breeding conditions– Breeding your Toulouse geese in inappropriate conditions won’t give you the best flock in the future. Ensure you meet all the breeding conditions before embarking on your breeding journey.
- Rear the goslings properly– Toulouse goslings are hardy, although they require good care to make it to adulthood. For instance, your newly hatched goslings need a proper diet and a predator-free environment. They also need treatment for various diseases affecting goslings, including coryza, coccidiosis, and fowl cholera.
Conclusion
Breeding Toulouse geese can be exciting, especially for farmers willing and ready to raise these geese. You can breed and raise these geese successfully if you put in adequate measures to ensure your birds remain productive and healthy in the long run.