167. They can be kept to advantage only where there are green commons, and there they are easily kept; live to a very great age; and are amongst the hardiest animals in the world. If well kept, a goose will lay a hundred eggs in a year. The French put their eggs under large hens of common fowls, to each of which they give four or five eggs; or under turkies, to which they give nine or ten goose-eggs. If the goose herself sit, she must be well and regularly fed, at, or near to, her nest. When the young ones are hatched, they should be kept in a warm place for about four days, and fed on barley-meal, mixed, if possible, with milk; and then they will begin to graze. Water for them, or for the old ones to swim in, is by no means necessary, nor, perhaps, ever even useful. Or, how is it, that you see such fine flocks of fine geese all over Long Island (in America) where there is scarcely such a thing as a pond or a run of water?
168. Geese are raised by grazing; but to fat them something more is required. Corn of some sort, or boiled Swedish turnips. Some corn and some raw Swedish turnips, or carrots, or white cabbages, or lettuces, make the best fatting. The modes that are resorted to by the French for fatting geese, nailing them down by their webs, and other acts of cruelty, are, I hope, such as Englishmen will never think of. They will get fat enough without the use of any of these unfeeling means being employed. He who can deliberately inflict torture upon an animal, in order to heighten the pleasure his palate is to receive in eating it, is an abuser of the authority which God has given him, and is, indeed, a tyrant in his heart. Who would think himself safe, if at the mercy of such a man? Since the first edition of this work was published, I have had a good deal of experience with regard to geese. It is a very great error to suppose that what is called a Michaelmas goose is the thing. Geese are, in general, eaten at the age when they are called green geese; or after they have got their full and entire growth, which is not until the latter part of October. Green geese are tasteless squabs; loose flabby things; no rich taste in them; and, in short, a very indifferent sort of dish. The full-grown goose has solidity in it; but it is hard, as well as solid; and in place of being rich, it is strong. Now, there is a middle course to take; and if you take this course, you produce the finest birds of which we can know any thing in England. For three years, including the present year, I have had the finest geese that I ever saw, or ever heard of. I have bought from twenty to thirty every one of these years. I buy them off the common late in June, or very early in July. They have cost me from two shillings to three shillings each, first purchase. I bring the flock home, and put them in a pen, about twenty feet square, where I keep them well littered with straw, so as for them not to get filthy. They have one trough in which I give them dry oats, and they have another trough where they have constantly plenty of clean water. Besides these, we give them, two or three times a day, a parcel of lettuces out of the garden. We give them such as are going to seed generally; but the better the lettuces are, the better the geese. If we have no lettuces to spare, we give them cabbages, either loaved or not loaved; though, observe, the white cabbage as well as the white lettuce, that is to say, the loaved cabbage and lettuce, are a great deal better than those that are not loaved. This is the food of my geese. They thrive exceedingly upon this food. After we have had the flock about ten days, we begin to kill, and we proceed once or twice a week till about the middle of October, sometimes later. A great number of persons who have eaten of these geese have all declared that they did not imagine that a goose could be brought to be so good a bird. These geese are altogether different from the hard, strong things that come out of the stubble fields, and equally different from the flabby things called a green goose. I should think that the cabbages or lettuces perform half the work of keeping and fatting my geese; and these are things that really cost nothing. I should think that the geese, upon an average, do not consume more than a shilling’s worth of oats each. So that we have these beautiful geese for about four shillings each. No money will buy me such a goose in London; but the thing that I can get nearest to it, will cost me seven shillings. Every gentleman has a garden. That garden has, in the month of July, a wagon-load, at least, of lettuces and cabbages to throw away. Nothing is attended with so little trouble as these geese. There is hardly any body near London that has not room for the purposes here mentioned. The reader will be apt to exclaim, as my friends very often do, “Cobbett’s Geese are all Swans.” Well, better that way than not to be pleased with what one has. However, let gentlemen try this method of fatting geese. It saves money, mind, at the same time. Let them try it; and if any one, who shall try it, shall find the effect not to be that which I say it is, let him reproach me publicly with being a deceiver. The thing is no invention of mine. While I could buy a goose off the common for half-a-crown, I did not like to give seven shillings for one in London, and yet I wished that geese should not be excluded from my house. Therefore I bought a flock of geese, and brought them home to Kensington. They could not be eaten all at once. It was necessary, therefore, to fix upon a mode of feeding them. The above mode was adopted by my servant, as far as I know, without any knowledge of mine; but the very agreeable result made me look into the matter; and my opinion, that the information will be useful to many persons, at any rate, is sufficient to induce me to communicate it to my readers.
DUCKS.
169. No water, to swim in, is necessary to the old, and is injurious to the very young. They never should be suffered to swim (if water be near) till more than a month old. The old duck will lay, in the year, if well kept, ten dozen of eggs; and that is her best employment; for common hens are the best mothers. It is not good to let young ducks out in the morning to eat slugs and worms; for, though they like them, these things kill them if they eat a great quantity. Grass, corn, white cabbages, and lettuces, and especially buck-wheat, cut, when half ripe, and flung down in the haulm. This makes fine ducks. Ducks will feed on garbage and all sorts of filthy things; but their flesh is strong, and bad in proportion. They are, in Long Island, fatted upon a coarse sort of crab, called a horse-foot fish, prodigious quantities of which are cast on the shores. The young ducks grow very fast upon this, and very fat; but wo unto him that has to smell them when they come from the spit; and, as for eating them, a man must have a stomach indeed to do that!
170. When young, they should be fed upon barley-meal, or curds, and kept in a warm place in the night-time, and not let out early in the morning. They should, if possible, be kept from water to swim in. It always does them harm; and, if intended to be sold to be killed young, they should never go near ponds, ditches, or streams. When you come to fat ducks, you must take care that they get at no filth whatever. They will eat garbage of all sorts; they will suck down the most nauseous particles of all those substances which go for manure. A dead rat three parts rotten is a feast to them. For these reasons I should never eat any ducks, unless there were some mode of keeping them from this horrible food. I treat them precisely as I do my geese. I buy a troop when they are young, and put them in a pen, and feed them upon oats, cabbages, lettuces, and water, and have the place kept very clean. My ducks are, in consequence of this, a great deal more fine and delicate than any others that I know any-thing of.
TURKEYS.
171. These are flying things, and so are common fowls. But it may happen that a few hints respecting them may be of use. To raise turkeys in this chilly climate, is a matter of much greater difficulty than in the climates that give great warmth. But the great enemy to young turkeys (for old ones are hardy enough) is the wet. This they will endure in no climate; and so true is this, that, in America, where there is always “a wet spell” in April, the farmers’ wives take care never to have a brood come out until that spell is passed. In England, where the wet spells come at haphazard, the first thing is to take care that young turkeys never go out, on any account, except in dry weather, till the dew be quite off the ground; and this should be adhered to till they get to be of the size of an old partridge, and have their backs well covered with feathers. And, in wet weather, they should be kept under cover all day long.
172. As to the feeding of them, when young, various nice things are recommended. Hard eggs chopped fine, with crumbs of bread, and a great many other things; but that which I have seen used, and always with success, and for all sorts of young poultry, is milk turned into curds. This is the food for young poultry of all sorts. Some should be made fresh every day; and if this be done, and the young turkeys kept warm, and especially from wet, not one out of a score will die. When they get to be strong, they may have meal and grain, but still they always love the curds.
173. When they get their head feathers they are hardy enough; and what they then want is room to prowl about. It is best to breed them under a common hen; because she does not ramble like a hen-turkey; and it is a very curious thing that the turkeys bred up by a hen of the common fowl, do not themselves ramble much when they get old; and for this reason, when they buy turkeys for stock, in America, (where there are such large woods, and where the distant rambling of turkeys is inconvenient,) they always buy such as have been bred under the hens of the common fowl; than which a more complete proof of the great powers of habit is, perhaps, not to be found. And ought not this to be a lesson to fathers and mothers of families? Ought not they to consider that the habits which they give their children are to stick by those children during their whole lives?
174. The hen should be fed exceedingly well, too, while she is sitting and after she has hatched; for though she does not give milk, she gives heat; and, let it be observed, that as no man ever yet saw healthy pigs with a poor sow, so no man ever saw healthy chickens with a poor hen. This is a matter much too little thought of in the rearing of poultry; but it is a matter of the greatest consequence. Never let a poor hen sit; feed the hen well while she is sitting, and feed her most abundantly when she has young ones; for then her labour is very great; she is making exertions of some sort or other during the whole twenty-four hours; she has no rest; is constantly doing something or other to provide food or safety for her young ones.