Why Not Keep Geese

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1778, 4 January 1886, Page 3

Why Not Keep Geese

The above is a question the greater pp. t of our settler wives might put to themsi Ives with advantage, for they would find it ifficult to give a good reason for not kei ling them. There are few persons who hav- not a decided taste for roast goose, so the m rket would be unlimited if only the price w re a little more reasonable. Again, so mai y of our selectors are new hands at fanning, and are not sufficiently acquainted with the habits of geese to knew that they are comparatively very little trouble tp keep. If a sward of couch grass is around the house (and there are very few farms that have not this), that will be their chief food—for geese are great graziers, and will subsist, and even get fat, on little else than grass. They roam about from early morn till late at night, always busily engaged devouring grass. There is an idea among men folk of the farm that where geese have been grazing no other animal will feed after them. This is true to a certain extent, for animals do not like to teed immediately after geese ; but, on the other band, geese have ultimately a beneficial effect on pasture, making coarse straggling grass land change in two or three seasons into a close thick sward. Geese give less trouble than any other kind of poultry, as almost from the day the yonng birds leave the shell they are able to take care of themselves, are very hardy, and require nothing for shelter other than an old shed, more as a protection from the sun in this climate than for any other reason. To keep geese profitably, they must have liberty to wander over grass lands, and it is also desirable that they should have access to water, otherwise many of their eggs may not be fertilised. For the first week after the yonng birds are hatched,* it is beat to confine the old bird, or she may overtax her goslings by taking them too far from home ; bat when they are a week old they may safely be left to the old bird, who will guard them from most dangers, for geese are good mothers. All that will now be necessary to do is to supply them with a liberal feed of grain—barley, oats, wheat, or crashed maize—night and morning ; this grain is best fed by being thrown into a trough of water. Fed in this manner, and allowed to ran on even the poorest of grass land, it is astonishing how the young birds will grow. That the rearing and fattening of geese can be made as profitable here as it is in Surrey and other of 'the English counties we feel convinced. There is always a demand for good geese, and, where there is so much waste grazing land as there is here round every selector’s homestead, they should prove the most profitable of all stock on the small form.—Rural Australian.