Selecting ganders... which ones should I keep?

I got geese last summer from Bomgaars, and we finally finished sexing them. We have 18 ganders and six geese, and we need to narrow down our gander flock. We have Toulouse, Embden, and White Chinese. Do any of these breeds mate for life? What is the best way of selecting the ganders to keep? How many should I keep, since I'm not butchering any of the ladies? If it has to do with conformation checking for the best ganders, how do I do it (I'm used to chickens, so this is all new ground)? Thanks in advance for any help!

Hi Elana,
I don't have goose experience (though they are on my list of animals to get sometime), so take this with a grain of salt, but I think the basics of selecting for breeding are the same. Especially with geese I would look at personality. If you are doing this for meat, I would look at growth size. With a mixed breed, I doubt it, but if you were breeding for show, you would want to check for the closest to breed specifications.

Good luck, and hopefully someone with more experience will reply soon.

Thanks Matt! Definitely worth getting! I'm not selecting for meat specifically, I have them for grazers and secondarily as guardians. The breeds I have were just what we ended up with from Bomgaars, so I know they aren't necessarily the best for my goals, but I'm not going for a specific breed at the moment. My personal opinion is that hybrids that come from the breeds that thrive are the best way to go, so I'm just trying to figure out how to help the process along without keeping all 18 of the boys, lol!

Hi Elena, if the geese pair off, I would let them do the selecting for you!  Since you have so many males, it might be a little difficult working it out though.  

We had too many drakes and only kept one, but he was the one our ducks willingly mated with.  The other two (we had three drakes and three ducks at the time) were complete jerks to us, to each other, and to our poor overmated ducks.  So a pretty easy choice, all told.  Good luck!