My slow and adorable goose named Tupelo was quite a marvel when she first feathered out. Typically a young goose when he or she first feathers out will have a bunch of speckled feathers on their chest and the chest will look brownish. But Tupelo was an exception. Her chest feathers were cream. Apart from the chest feathers there are the tail feathers. Most geese will have sloppy coloring on their tail feathers. Each tail feather has a gray spot in the middle outlined by a thick white border. Sometimes that spot is not all that perfect and has a mixture of white on it. Other times the top half of the tail feather can be white while the bottom half is gray with some of both color mixed in. So it is rather crazy when first feathering out and can stay crazy even past that. 

Some geese have rounder heads than others. In my opinion, females who have a rounder head look better than ones with squarer heads. There are many variations and how their head is shaped is one of the most distinctive characteristics for distinguishing individuals. This trait will have to be decided to one's own opinion because of all the variation.

I knew very little about what geese did, why they did it, and what they enjoy doing. One of the things they love most is to get up onto higher objects such as hay bales, cinder blocks, etc. I would assume they like these higher places because it means they are sort of in the sky. Like they are flying. The instincts of flying are still somewhat there in these domesticated geese but they cannot go anywhere. Apart from the instincts of being up in the sky, they also just like to have some fun. Most of their fun involves pecking at things and swimming around in the water. They may just stand there on the hay bale or whatever the thing is or they might also be grabbing pieces of hay or pecking at the thing. 

I had originally decided on four types of eye-colors: Sassafras, Cherry, Ash, and Wide Eyes. This proved incredibly complicated because the Sassafras and Cherry eye-colors proved to be very similar except for one gander with the Cherry eye-color. But that was one goose. I decided to merge Sassafras and Cherry and simply go with Brown. Sassafras was named after one of my geese who passed this eye-color on to three of her offspring. I used Cherry because this color I considered to have a reddish look to it. I kept Ash and Wide Eyes although they may prove to be complicated sometimes as well.

Dandelion has grown to have a fascinating trait. He has a big gray spot above each eye that makes him look like he has eyebrows. I cannot call by name any previous gosling from the past who may have had this same trait. It is quite possible none of them ever had it as Dandelion is from a different bloodline. I will be watching to see if this will completely disappear or if it will make his coloring slightly or obviously different from the other geese when he is fully feathered out.

Before we knew anything about geese we ordered two Chinese geese. We did not know what Willow was. We did not know whether Willow was a boy or a girl. So we decided to get two female geese so that even if Willow turned out to be a female it would not matter because there would be no fighting. Our plans were ruined when Willow unexpectedly died. We got a lot of goslings and that was not the plan. We were going for only a few geese. We still planned to get the Chinese geese as well.