RAISING GEESE
March is a good month to set goose eggs. As it takes them a little over a month to hatch, they will come out in April and the early birds catch the best prices. It is really surprising that more farmer's boys and girls do not raise geese. They will "board themselves" if given a chance at pasture, but need fattening with ground grain if held for Christmas trade.
Goslings can be raised under hens, six eggs in a nest, but the goose is an admirable mother. Unlike most of his feathered kindred the gander is a true helpmate, often "spelling" his mate during the sitting period and caring for the young afterward with great solicitude.
Watchful care is needed to prevent the damp, cold April from getting the best of little goslings. They should begin their careers with a meal of bread crumbs, scalded meal, and hard-boiled eggs, chopped vegetable tops and grass included in the mash. They eat small quantities at a time, but need it frequently to stay their stomachs.
Water for drinking should be accessible, clean, and fresh always. Many a sick gosling can trace his disorder directly to the bad water. A large tub of water for bathing, too, is advisable for geese after they are feathered.
Toulouse and Embden geese are tremendous creatures, even reaching the enormous weight of twenty-five pounds. Their meat is highly prized in European countries and is becoming popular in America so that a good market is assured.
The business of fattening geese for market is quite specialized now. Men engaged in this business visit the farms where a few geese are kept and buy the eight-weeks old goslings for seventy-five cents to one dollar and a half apiece. If you can get this price your profit is fair and certain and your work ended. You can put your cash into some other business. Raising geese is a good summer vacation job. On a goose fattening farm near a good Eastern city market as many as fifteen or twenty thousand geese are fattening at one time.
Geese on farms when I was a girl were kept principally for their feathers which found their way into the pillows and feather beds then used. The best pillows in my house are filled with the feathers plucked from geese with which I was personally acquainted. These feathers have a high market value, higher when you buy than when you sell to be sure, but you may be able to supply a local market and thus get a better price. Geese, like all the other feathered tribes, moult naturally in late summer. If the live geese are to be plucked, it should be done very carefully, three or four feathers at a time. The geese do not show evidence of minding much when they find that your designs are peaceable. Only the breast feathers and the smallest ones from the back are ordinarily taken for home use. Avoid the feathers with coarse stiff shafts. No down should be removed. Goose quills make good toothpicks, cleaned and scalded and trimmed into shape. Or they may be sold separately as feathers.
Geese are plucked before sending to market. Most of the feathers and some of the down now extensively used by manufacturers of bed clothing comes from the marketed geese.