Everything about The Swan Goose totally explained
The
Swan Goose Anser cygnoides is a large
goose with a natural breeding range in
Mongolia, northernmost
China, and southeastern
Russia. It is
migratory and winters mainly in central and eastern China. The species has been domesticated, and introduced and
feral populations occur elsewhere.
It is large for its genus, 81–94 cm long (the longest
Anser goose) and weighing 2.8–3.5 kg (the second-heaviest
Anser, after the
Greylag Goose). It has a long neck, long, heavy black bill, brown cap and pale underparts apart from some belly streaking; the upperparts are brown and the legs are orange. The sexes are similar, although the male is larger, and juveniles are duller. The voice is a loud honking. It grazes on
sedges, and rarely swims. It forms small flocks outside the breeding season., but new research has shown it to be not as rare as it was believed. Consequently, it's downlisted to
Vulnerable status in 2008.
Domestication
The Swan Goose is extensively kept as
poultry. A large number of
breeds have been selected in captivity, known as
Chinese goose. Chinese geese differ from the wild birds in much larger size (up to 5-10 kg in males, 4-9 kg in females, and in having an often strongly developed basal knob on the upper side of the bill. Some domesticated, introduced, or feral populations may be completely white, while others retain a plumage pattern more like wild birds. The knob at the top of the beak is more prominent on males than females. By 6–8 weeks of age, the knob is already pronounced enough that it can be used for sexing. The African geese are even heavier, with a noticeably plump neck and a pronounced
dewlap in old birds; they've a conspicuously upright stance when on land.
Another Swan Goose breed, even more massive than Chinese geese, is known as the
African goose. Famed for their weight, African geese nonetheless have very lean meat, much more so than meat breeds of the Greylag Goose like
Toulouse or
Embden Geese. How exactly they relate to
Africa isn't known; though they're sometimes held to have been first bred in
Guinea, their wild ancestors are doubtlessly the East Asian species and the common name may just be a tribute to their "exoticness".
A female Chinese goose can lay 50–60 eggs over the course of the breeding season (February to June), although there are reports of Chinese geese laying up to 100 eggs during that time.
Charles Darwin studied goose breeds as part of his work on the theory of
evolution. He noted that the external differences between Chinese geese and breeds descended from the Greylag Goose belied a rather close relationship:
"The hybrids from the common and Chinese geese (A. cygnoides), species which are so different that they're generally ranked in distinct genera, have often bred in this country with either pure parent, and in one single instance they've bred inter se."
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Swan Goose'.
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