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permaculture - [permaculture] Central Texas - eggs, meat, down, feathers, fertility and more

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  • From: Marjory <forestgarden@gvtc.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Central Texas - eggs, meat, down, feathers, fertility and more
  • Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:40:33 -0600

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. .
















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