Sunday 10th June 2018
The Good Lifers
And yet more selling decisions!!
As expressed a fair bit in this diary and even more in our Facebook group Celebrating Smallholding UK, we are just rather a lot in love with Gloria, Sylvester and Guinevere. The problem has been of course, how we 'keep' them when they are the offspring of Tom, Barbara and Margo! In theory it is not advisable to breed animals that are related to each other due to potential genetic faults being magnified through familial mating.
In practice, it happens all the time!
The other issue is numbers because in keeping them, we double of numbers of geese, fine now, maybe not so fine in the winter!!
So we have decided to sell the Good Lifers and to keep GG and S as a breeding trio!!! Familial breeding amongst birds is not uncommon, father/daughter or mother/son is acceptable, sibling mating is 'okay'!!
We will slightly keep our options open and may have to consider swapping Sylvester for an unrelated male at a later point. At the moment that thought seems unthinkable!!
But selling Tom, Barbara and Margo is a definite plan!
As expressed a fair bit in this diary and even more in our Facebook group Celebrating Smallholding UK, we are just rather a lot in love with Gloria, Sylvester and Guinevere. The problem has been of course, how we 'keep' them when they are the offspring of Tom, Barbara and Margo! In theory it is not advisable to breed animals that are related to each other due to potential genetic faults being magnified through familial mating.
In practice, it happens all the time!
So we have decided to sell the Good Lifers and to keep GG and S as a breeding trio!!! Familial breeding amongst birds is not uncommon, father/daughter or mother/son is acceptable, sibling mating is 'okay'!!
We will slightly keep our options open and may have to consider swapping Sylvester for an unrelated male at a later point. At the moment that thought seems unthinkable!!
But selling Tom, Barbara and Margo is a definite plan!