I am led to offer a few suggestions on this subject from having ascertained that in the Fens of Lincolnshire, notwithstanding a great decrease there in the breeding of geese from extensive drainage, one individual, Mr Clarke of Boston, fattens every year, between Michaelmas and Christmas, the prodigious number of seven thousand geese, and that another dealer at Spalding prepares for the poultry butcher nearly as many: these they purchase in lots from the farmers’ wives.
Perhaps a few details of the Lincolnshire practice may be acceptable to some of the readers of this Journal:—
The farmers in the Fens keep breeding stocks proportioned to the extent of suitable land which they can command; and in order to insure the fertility of the eggs, they allow one gander to three geese, which is a higher proportion of males than is deemed necessary elsewhere. The number of goslings in each brood averages about ten, which, allowing for all casualties, is a considerable produce.
There have been extraordinary instances of individual fecundity, on which, however, it would be as absurd for any goose-breeder to calculate, as it is proverbially unwise to reckon chickens before they are hatched; and this fruitfulness is only attainable by constant feeding with stimulating food through the preceding winter.
A goose has been known to lay seventy eggs within twelve months, twenty-six in the spring, before the time of incubation, and (after bringing out seventeen goslings) the remainder by the end of the year.
The white variety is preferred to the grey or party-coloured, as the birds of this colour feed more kindly, and their feathers are worth three shillings a stone more than the others: the quality of the land, however, on which the breeding stock is to be maintained, decides this matter, generally strong land being necessary for the support of the white or larger kind. Under all circumstances a white gander is preferred, in order to have a large progeny. It has been remarked, but I know not if with reason, that ganders are more frequently white than the females.
To state all the particulars of hatching and rearing would be superfluous, and mere repetition of what is contained in the various works on poultry. I shall merely state some of the peculiarities of the practice in the county of Lincoln.
When the young geese are brought up at different periods by the great dealers, they are put into pens together, according to their age, size, and condition, and fed on steamed potatoes and ground oats, in the ratio of one measure of oats to three of potatoes. By unremitting care as to cleanliness, pure water, and constant feeding, these geese are fattened in about three weeks, at an average cost of one penny per day each.
The cramming system, either by the fingers or the forcing pump, described by French writers, with the accompanying barbarities of blinding, nailing the feet to the floor, or confinement in perforated casks or earthen pots (as is said to be the case sometimes in Poland), are happily unknown in Lincolnshire, and I may add throughout England, with one exception—the nailing of the feet to boards. The unequivocal proofs of this may occasionally, but very rarely, be seen in the geese brought into the London markets: these, however, may possibly be imported ones, though I fear they are not so.
The Lincolnshire dealers do not give any of those rich greasy pellets of barley meal and hot liquor, which always spoil the flavour, to their geese, as they well know that oats is the best feeding for them; barley, besides being more expensive, renders the flesh loose and insipid, and rather chickeny in flavour.