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.
RAISING DUCKS
Probably in many neighbourhoods you would be laughed at if you tried to raise ducks without a pond or stream of water. It is not customary. True, if you have them for ornament principally, they look best disporting themselves in what seems to be their natural element. But if you believe there is money in raising ducks for market, nothing is easier than to prove that the people who laughed were not up to date.
You have heard the old saying on a very wet day, "Good weather for ducks." Don't you believe it. If you go into duck raising you must be just as careful about ducks getting wet as you are about your chicks. The duck must have plenty of water inside, all he will drink, but keep him dry outside. Little ducks are hardy if kept dry and warm. Even cold drinking water will give them cramps and should be avoided. The drinking vessels should be so covered that the duckling can get only the bill wet.
The advantage of ducks over chicks is this: they do not bring quite so big a price per pound, but they grow so much faster during the first two months of their lives. Ducks should be marketed at eight to ten weeks old. At ten weeks old a good broiler will weigh about two pounds and will sell for seventy-five cents, but a duckling will weigh four to five pounds, which at twenty-five cents a pound will give you from one dollar to one dollar and twenty-five cents. The cost of feeding the two will be about the same.
Ducks have other advantages over chickens. They are not nearly so subject to vermin, though lice sometimes attack their heads. They seem to thrive in confinement and cost less to house than chickens. Their feathers will bring a good price, and eggs of pure breeds for hatching are in demand. They are excellent layers, even better than some hens, as experience will show. If a duck lays nine dozen eggs at four dollars a dozen, and raises a family, she does a pretty good year's work, and is more profitable to keep than some cows. She eats grubs and insects, too, and grass and surplus from the vegetable garden.