Breeding Geese.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 224, 15 October 1887, Page 3

Breeding Geese.

On small places or on small farms, cays the Fancier*? Weekly, a flock of geese are more of a nuisance than anything else, for they will trample down and destroy far more than they will ever bring when sold. This is especially true on a truck or fruit farm, where vegetables or small fruits are grown for they make sad havoc with the produce, and what they do not eat they generally manage to trample down and destroy with their large, flat feet. To prevent this on such places they must be confined, and when confined they do not thrive, while they never prove profitable unless they have their full liberty. There are, however, hundreds of farms on which geese can be bred with great profit, the grass and grain farms being just, the place for them to thrive well. Their principal food is grass, on which they will live nearly the entire summer and early fall, and very little if any grain food need be supplied until they are taken up in the tall to fatten for market. ThiS ( is what makes them so much more profitable to raise than almost any other kind of poultry stock, and it is a great wonder to us that more persons do not breed geese largely for market, for, aside from the great weight of flesh they will produce, they return a fair percentage of profit in the shape of " live geeso feathers," which readily command about fifty cents per pound when sold, or which makes such warm, comfortable beds, without any appreciable cost for the farmer and his family during the cold, wintry nights. A trio of mature birds will produce all the " goslings " that can be well cared for on a single farm, for we have seen over an hundred raised from a single trio, by setting the first lot of eggs under ordinary hens an I keeping the geese laying right along. The old goose is, however, the best mother and should be permitted to hatch out and care for a flock in the later season. While setting or when running with the goslings, very young chicks must not be kept within easy distance, elso many of them will pay the death penalty, for geese are, at such times, cross and pugnacious. Fully-feathered young chicks are generally quick enough to get out of the way and soon learn to do so. We were taught this item by losing a whole coop of very fine chicks, and have ever since remembered it. For general purposes, farmers and others will find the Bremen or Embden and the Toulouse breeds of geese to answerb heir purposes admirably, as they are? urge size' prolific, hardy and easy to rear.