Angel wing and breeding

[mangled]

Recently, I've adopted 6 African geese. One of the males has serious angel wing and one of the females just on the one side and not as bad. They've all just begun laying and I've been collecting the eggs and plan to incubate them.

It just occurred to me this morning that there are eggs from the angel wing pair mixed in. While I understand that angel wing is perceived generally to be nutritional, I *really* don't want a bunch of goslings with angel wing.

Does anyone have experience with this? I can easily separate them if need be, but I'm just curious if I'm being overly concerned.


Thanks in advance-
Em

 

[Oregon Blues]

It's impossible to say without knowing how they were raised.

Myself, I wouldn't breed a duck or goose with angel wing. It's possible that it is the fault of a bad diet, which isn't inherited. But my opinion is that it also involves weak tendons or ligaments. The diet just stresses the wing and causes the problem with supporting weight to show up.

I've got a couple of suggestions:

First, don't sell any of their eggs for hatching.

Then, if you would like to take the chance, you could hatch a couple of their eggs, mark their goslings and watch them very carefully for any signs of weak wings.

My personal preference would be to not breed them and to hatch eggs from the other birds to build your flock.

Consider this: if they are all from the same place, that means they were probably all raised the same, with the same diet. 2 of the birds got angel wing and others didn't. To me, that means that two of the birds have a weaker wing structure than the others.

 

[aaustin93]

Hello! I wouldn't worry about angel wing in the babies. It's normally a diet thing. My African has it but his siblings that were on a different diet while they were young don't have it. (my friend has his sister). Just make sure you order waterfowl starter for the goslings

 

[sourland]

Raising young from this pair there is a legitimate concern that they too might have angel wing. Although angel wing is probably primarily dietary in nature, there is also probably a genetic predisposition towards it. I would not hatch eggs from this pair.

 

[mangled]

Thanks for the feed back. I've separated the angel wing pair.

Blessings-
Em