Heritage Poultry Breeds
and Farm Fresh, Free-Range Eggs
While we have lots pf poultry at Pleasant Lake Farm for egg production and meat, we only breed a select few. For breeding, we have chosen our favorite heritage breeds of ducks, geese and turkeys that are also listed on the Conservation Priority List with the Livestock Conservancy. Heritage breeds are traditional livestock breeds that were raised by our forefathers. We are excited to be part of the effort of rare breed conservation. We cannot ship eggs or ducklings/goslings/poults.
Farm Fresh Eggs for Eating
CHICKEN EGGS - $4.00 a dozen
DUCK EGGS - $4.00 a dozen
Chicken eggs are typically available year-round and put out in our self-service egg stand daily. Eggs are fresh and unwashed. Duck eggs are typically available April through November and are put out by request. Please let us know when you would like to pick up your eggs. Call/text 207-542-8878.
American Buff Geese
From the Livestock Conservancy:
American Buff geese were developed in North America and descend from the wild Greylag goose, which is native to Europe and Northern Asia. The history of this colorful bird is obscure. It may have developed from buff mutations in gray geese flocks or was refined from buff-colored stock imported from Europe. It was admitted to the American Poultry Association’s Standard of Perfection in 1947.
The American Buff is a lovely apricot-fawn color. The buff-colored feathers on its back and sides are edged with creamy white. Its abdomen is nearly white. Its bill and feet are orange to reddish-orange, and the hard “nail” at the tip of the bill is a pale pink. Its legs may fade to pink during laying, or when green grass is not available. The American Buff has brown eyes.
The breed is the largest of the medium-weight class of geese with mature ganders weighing 18 pounds and mature geese weighing 16 pounds. The body conformation of the American Buff is typically European in style. It has a medium-long neck with deeply furrowed feathers. It has a chunky body with little or no evidence of a keel, a slightly arched back, and two rounded fatty lobes on the abdomen. The tail is held in line with or only slightly above the line of the back. This sturdy body is set on moderately sized legs that are set suitably far apart to provide a stable base.
When selecting breeding stock, consideration should first be given to good body size. A medium shade of buff that is free of gray is preferred. Even color on the back is desirable, though a portion of the plumage usually is somewhat checkered or mottled, even on today’s best show specimens. Avoid breeding stock with pinched heads, small or shallow bodies, prominent keels, gray in the plumage, and excessively faded or dark color. To produce the highest percentage of offspring with correct color, some breeders have found it helpful to use ganders that are slightly lighter in color than their standard-colored mates. Ganders can be mated with three to five geese.
The American Buff is calm and docile. They’re good parents, attending well to their goslings. These attributes make the breed well suited for the average home flock. The American Buff makes a medium-large roasting bird. Its colored plumage doesn’t show soil as readily as that of white birds, yet its light-colored pin feathers allow it to dress out as cleanly as a white goose.
Cotton Patch Geese
From the Livestock Conservancy:
Once common on farms in the southeastern United States, the Cotton Patch goose gets its name from the tasks it performed. These geese weeded 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.
The breed’s beginnings aren’t clear, but it is thought to have descended from European stock brought to the US during the colonial period. Cotton Patch geese have many qualities in common with other sex-linked European goose breeds including the Shetland, West of England, and Normandy, although these breeds are recent importations to North America and did not play a role in its development. The Cotton Patch goose is the remaining relic of a little-known American breed with parent stock that likely shares common ancestors with other sex-linked breeds.
The Cotton Patch is a “sleek” goose that resembles the Greylag geese from which all European geese descend. 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 breed is a light to medium-sized goose and are a landrace breed with some variability between strains. The Cotton Patch’s head is rounded, and the pinkish-to-orange 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. In all the bloodlines, the males are found to be all or mostly white with a small amount of dove grey. Inversely the females are mostly dove gray to brownish in color with variable amounts of white in their feathers. They have pinkish to orange feet and have blue eyes.
The geese lay large white eggs, with about 4-7 eggs per clutch. In the past, a good goose could lay up to 90 large eggs a year. The eggs are tasty, and their meat is flavorful. Ganders weigh 9-12 lbs. and geese 8-10 lbs.
Cotton Patch geese can fly well (beyond their first year), easily clearing 5-6-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 are excellent foragers and breeders should continue to select for this trait. Their smaller size allows them to tolerate hot weather better than heavier geese breeds, and they are very tolerant of hot, humid climates and are easy to keep. Cotton Patch geese are very rare and in need of serious conservation breeders.
Dutch Hookbill Ducks
From the Livestock Conservancy:
Dutch Hookbill ducks are a unique and very old poultry breed thought to have originated in the Netherlands’ Noord-Holland province between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As their name implies, the breed features a downward curving beak, setting it apart from other duck breeds. It’s believed this trait was useful to duck breeders in making it easier for hunters to distinguish the domesticated Hookbill from wild ducks that inhabited the same land. In Holland, these ducks were managed in the waterways and canals of the countryside and were expected to forage for most of their food. Today, they’re still among the best foragers of domestic ducks.
According to the Dutch Association of Breeders of Domesticated Waterfowl (Nederlandse Vereniging van fokkers van gedomesticeerd watervogels), Hookbill ducks and the Noord-Holland White Breasted duck, also known as the Witborst duck, had similar genealogies. Their exact origins have never been determined, but it’s speculated that they developed from early importations of Indian Runners. This idea is supported by J. Bonenkamp in the magazine Avicultura (8/1990) where he recounts finding pure Hookbills among groups of ducks in East India.
The unique appearance of the breed made them desirable as ornamental birds, but was soon recognized as excellent layers of eggs. That combined with their remarkable foraging capability made the breed widely popular on Dutch farms. In 18th-century Holland, ducks were provided a place to nest and feed while they were brooding. Then ducks and ducklings were all sent out to the surrounding wetlands to forage for their food and received no supplemental food. Ducklings also had their wings clipped to make them easier to catch later. By mid-August, the birds were gathered and sent to market in Purmerend, where they were purchased by duck keepers who would use them for eggs. The birds kept for breeding were selected to be sturdy and disease resistant, self-sufficient, adaptable to new circumstances, and efficient layers that needed less food than other breeds in order to be productive.
The breed declined in the 20th century due to a diminished market for duck eggs and the effect of increasingly polluted waterways that served as their home. By 1980, the Hookbill was nearly extinct, but through a Dutch effort led by Hans van de Zaan, the last 15 birds were collected and used to start a conservation breeding program in the Netherlands.
Dave Holderread was among the first to import the Dutch Hookbill into the United States in 2000. He found that there were three bill types in the population: extreme curve, moderate curve, and straight. In his book Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks (2011), Holderread outlines that the most effective breeding strategy was to cross birds with moderately curved beaks to each other or an extremely curved beaked bird with a straight beaked bird as the best breeding options. He found that crosses between birds with extremely curved beaks had poor egg fertility. There are still very few primary breeding flocks of Dutch Hookbills in the U.S.
Dutch Hookbill ducks have excellent flight capability, especially younger individuals. The birds reach sexual maturity very quickly by around 16 weeks of age. Healthy ducks can be expected to lay anywhere from 100 to 225+ eggs per year. They come in three primary color variations: dusky, white, and white-bibbed dusky. Other colors exist but not in great numbers here in the states. The Hookbill is a remarkable breed that deserves a second look as a viable and efficient egg producer for small-scale farming.
Sebastopol Geese
From the Livestock Conservancy:
The Sebastopol goose originated in southeastern Europe, with sources pointing to the region around the Black Sea. They were named after Sebastopol, a Russian city from which they were imported to the US. In Germany, the birds have been known as “Strupp Guns” or “Lockengans” which means “unkempt goose” or “curl goose” due to the frizzled appearance of their feathers. The breed was developed from wild Graylag geese, which are native to Europe, and was recognized by The American Poultry Association Standard of Perfection in 1938.
The Sebastopol is readily identified by its feathers: long, soft-quilled, curling feathers drape elegantly from its wings, body, and tail. This modification in plumage is an example of breeding for a specific trait. Whenever a domestic animal is selected for an unusual characteristic, great care must be taken to ensure that the vigor and fertility of breeding stock aren’t overlooked. The primary selection criteria should be health and adequate size, then well-curled breast feathers, flexible flight feathers, and back and tail plumes that are long, broad, and spiraled. Avoid using breeding stock with crooked toes and “slipped wings.”
The white variety of the Sebastopol is best known. Both males and females have pure white feathers that contrast with their bright blue eyes and orange bills and feet. Juveniles often have traces of gray. There are also gray and buff color varieties.
Sebastopols are medium-sized geese, with ganders weighing 14 lbs. and geese weighing 12 lbs. when mature. They have prominent eyes, slightly arched necks, keelless breasts, and large, rounded heads. The head’s plumage and that of the upper two-thirds of the neck is normal; the breast and underbody feathers are elongated and well-curled. The soft, fluffy feathers of the back, wings, and tail have flexible shafts, are attractively spiraled, and are so long that they nearly touch the ground. The curled feathers prevent flight, and they don’t like to wander and are slow-moving which makes them easier to confine.
Sebastopol geese are moderate layers, producing 25-35 large, white eggs annually. They are broody and good mothers and can be used as adoptive parents for goslings of their own or other breeds. Ganders can be mated with one to four geese. Fertility problems can sometimes be helped by clipping the long plumes of the back and tail and the feathers around the vent.
To keep Sebastopols looking good, clean water for swimming should be made available. They have webbed feet and are good swimmers. While they’re hardy and can be raised successfully in cold climates, it’s a good idea to provide more protection during wet, cold, and windy weather than normally afforded to other breeds, as their loose-fitting feathers don’t provide as much warmth, nor do they shed water as well.
This attractive, friendly breed has a quiet and pleasant disposition, are excellent foragers, fatten easily, and they make gentle pets as they are more on the shy side than aggressive like some other goose breeds. They are a dual-purpose and ornamental breed and can be used to keep the grass short where they are raised. Sebastopols produce good quality meat for roasting.
