Our very noisy baby geese have grown from yellow to white in 5 weeks and are surprisingly quiet. I thought our less than a year old livestock guard dog would need extensive supervision before they could be around the geese or ducks. So far so good, our youngest dog has done great with them. We have three muscovy hens setting, a fourth I suspect is setting somewhere undisclosed (who knew a duck could be so sneaky?). Hens from this year's first hatch our going to a new home in exchange for some other blood line hens in a the future. I have seen the math on how rabbits can out produce a cow in meat in the freezer and believe the same is true for muscovies. I have 5 drakes from the first clutch that are growing fast in tractors. In another week they will go into a run and have another 8 weeks before they go to freezer camp. I will get to see if the numbers I have read online pan out. I have butchered a nearly year old drake and it would have easily have been 12 pounds. With 67% yield thats a lot of critter. If these 5 drakes reach 5 pounds yield than that's 25 pounds. The drakes as a adults weigh alot more than the females, Drakes are 11 to 12 pounds, hens around 8 as adults. Thus yield numbers are greatly going to very on the gender ratio of the clutch. I also know the 13 week recommend butcher age is not going to far from the adult size. Muscovies have a great feed conversion rate. Between 2 and 2.25. That's not terribly behind broiler chicken rates of 1.85. Those numbers are for confined animals. I have tractored quail, chickens, muscovies, recently indian runners, and geese. The geese really hammer the grass. Muscovies also eat the grass. The Indian runner ducks don't eat very much at all being a slight built egg laying breed. Chickens seem to really like other plants other than grass like clover and plantain. Thus, I believe that muscovies are going to win the feed conversions rate when it comes to being in tactors as they are going to forage more. If you factor in time muscovies are going to loose, as they take twice as long to grow out. If anyone has any idea what breed these geese are I would love to know. Our greenhouse looks nothing like the pic now, the bulk of our plants are sold and that's a very good thing!
Look forward to questions and comments. 
