The Livestock Conservancy: https://livestockconservancy.org/heritage-breeds/heritage-breeds-list/cotton-patch-geese/
Once commonplace on farms in the southeastern United States, the Cotton Patch goose gets its name from the tasks it performed. These geese would weed cotton and corn fields up until the 1950s. Cotton Patches are remembered in the rural south for helping many farmers and their families survive the Great Depression by providing a regular source of meat, eggs, and grease.
Up until the 1950s, Cotton Patch geese were customarily kept on rural Southern homesteads and farms as multi-purpose poultry used for weeding, meat, eggs, down, and grease. Their grazing kept fields clear of crabgrass and other weeds, while leaving crops unharmed and reducing the amount of manual labor necessary. After the mid-20th century, herbicides almost entirely replaced weeding on American farms, and the Cotton Patch goose declined in concert. Considered critically endangered by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, the Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities, and the American Poultry Association, it has largely disappeared from the Southern farms where it was once common. It is also included in Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, a catalog of heritage foods in danger of extinction.
The breed’s beginnings aren’t clear but it’s thought to have descended from European stock brought to the U.S. during the colonial period. Cotton Patch geese possess many qualities in common with other sex-linked European breeds such as the Shetland, West of England, and Normandy geese.
However, these breeds are recent importations to North America and haven’t played a role in the development of the Cotton Patch goose. The Cotton Patch goose is the remaining relic of a little-known American breed of goose with parent stock that probably shares common ancestors with these other sex-linked geese. Cotton Patches differ from other sex-linked goose breeds by having pink or orange-pink bills, lightweight bodies, and the ability to fly.
The Cotton Patch is a “sleek” goose that resembles Greylag geese from which all European geese descend. The breed is a light to medium-sized goose. They’re a landrace breed with some variability between strains. Their smaller size allows them to tolerate hot weather better than heavier geese breeds. The Cotton Patch is an “upright” goose with a tail in line with its back and wings, giving it a clean wedge profile. The Cotton Patch’s body is more elongated and less rounded than breeds such as Shetland or Pilgrim goose. The paunch is minimal and when present has a single lobe.
The Cotton Patch’s head is rounded and the beak is dished. One strain more closely resembles the Pilgrim goose and has a beak that is slightly “roman”. The ganders in this strain tend to have as many gray feathers as Pilgrim ganders, but these feathers are all dove gray – unlike the Pilgrim in which they can be slate gray.
Cotton Patch geese have the ability to fly well beyond their first year, easily clearing 5 to 6-foot fences without a running start. This may seem like a fault to some, but it often allows them to escape predators. As expected from their history, they’re excellent foragers and goose breeders should continue to select for this trait. Cotton Patch geese are very rare and in need of serious conservation breeders.
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Society
http://cottonpatchgoosesociety.org/
The Cotton Patch Goose Society is a loose of interested parties who became acquainted through the facebook group, Cotton Patch Goose Breeders.
Little published information has been available for enthusiasts to learn from, and it has become apparent over time that having consolidated information in a central location is of paramount importance. At the present time, The Society is concentrating on being an information portal about landrace breeding, foundation gaggle genetics, historical information, and networking of committed breeders.
Frye said she has heard that long ago on farms in the Southeast these animals were released at just the right time – when the tobacco, cotton or corn crops were high enough and the weeds were low enough – for the cotton patch geese to go into the crops and eat up the grasses and weeds.
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Kansas farmer lands national grant to help her raise her endangered geese – she’s the only one in Kansas raising this bird
Geese waddle. They fly. They honk, and sometimes they can be downright aggressive. But a farmer in Louisburg says her heritage geese are both gentle and personable.
Audrey Morris, who runs Morris Meadows Farm, started raising cotton patch geese, an endangered fowl, 18 months ago. Being the only one in Kansas to breed this waterfowl, she wants to make sure they survive.
Morris applied for and last week received a grant from the Livestock Conservancy. The $1,300 microgrant will help her improve the brooding facilities for her flock of heritage geese. This will also help Morris protect the geese from predators and other disturbances and increase their hatching rate.
“I took them home and fell in love with them,” Morris said.
Cotton patch geese
Jeannette Beranger, the senior program manager for The Livestock Conservancy, said this breed of geese is not particularly large. They weigh about 7 to 10 pounds.
“They’re fabulous geese,” she said. “They’re a little more predator savvy.”
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