permaculture

[Marjory <forestgarden@gvtc.com>]

A Gaggle of Geese for Sale

We have a group of four Brown Chinese geese for sale as a group.  They 
are two years old and currently laying.  They laid last year, raised a 
few goslings, and they were excellent parents (all of them look after 
the youngsters). 

These Chinese geese are excellent egg layers, laying from approximately 
October to March here in Central Texas.  A goose egg is delicious and 
huge; equivalent to 3 or 4 large chicken eggs.  We collect and eat the 
eggs until about late January when we let the hens start setting to 
raise up a brood of new young goslings. 

Geese are excellent homestead animals as they primarily live off of 
grass, and actually disdain grains unless there is nothing else 
available.  They don't eat many broad-leafed plants, but they do eat 
some.  They do not eat bugs.  They require shade in the summer, as 
everyone in Texas does, but no significant housing in the winter (they 
do have goose down after all).  They need fresh water every day, and 
when you come to purchase them, we will show you how we use drinking 
water buckets gravity fed from drums.which simply need to be kicked over 
each day to refill with clean water.  You should have two of the 
drinking water buckets for redundancy - and so you can slip off for a 
day if you need to. 

Goose meat is a dark, short grained meat and is very tasty not having a 
strong flavor like goat or mutton does.  As with any livestock, it is 
always better young, but we have eaten them several years old.  Just 
boil the meat on a low heat for several hours and use in stews. 

We use our geese primarily for fertility in our small orchard.  We put 
fresh water into shallow tubs placed beneath our fruit trees.  The geese 
love it and bathe, preen, copulate, and of course defecate in the water 
making a good ole mess which doesn't sound real appealing to you or me, 
but is wonderful stuff for fruit and nut trees.  We rotate the tubs 
around the orchard and a significant amount of fertility is provided.  
Since the geese love grass, they tend to munch on what is closest and 
help out with the weeding. 

They can fly a little bit, but it is more comical than practical.  A 2 
to 3 foot fence easily keeps them confined.

They would love to be on a pond, but make sure it is large enough for 
them or they will mess it up - I am guessing an acre sized pond would be 
large enough for a small gaggle like this. 

The geese will need protection from predators.  If you don't have a dog 
for protecting them, then they can be trained to return to a pen each 
night, but that will take some work on your part.  We can give you some 
good pointers on how to do that.  I would not recommend a gaggle of less 
than four as they need a minimum size group to help each other keep 
watch.  We use a combination of guiennas, geese, chickens, and dogs to 
help each other keep watch on the farm and we have very low losses due 
to predators with this diversity of eyes, ears, and noses (yes, when one 
species 'alarms' the others take notice). 

We are asking $200 for the flock of four.  There are very few sources of 
grown, experienced geese unless you steal them from town lake or 
something like that.  And I really don't know why as these animals are 
so useful and require so little feed or housing, and offer so much to 
the small homesteader.  . 

You can contact Marjory at marjory@gvtc.com if you want to buy this 
gaggle.  .