This page contains information about raising geese, what kind of geese to raise, what to feed geese ... along with tips, instructions and useful techniques to help you start your own farm and living independently away from cities. Below are information about raising your own geese. If that's what you're loooking for then this is the place for you. Below you will find the most important aspects related to raising geese, just enough to get you started, if you have any question you can visit our forum and ask our expert farmers.
Raising geese is very easy and require very low maintenance if any. A pen of geese, say three geese and a gander will run happily about the fields, and live on grass with just a handful of grain thrown to them every night to lure them home to shut them in from the foxes, otherwise they don’t need any grain.
But you must protect them from rats and foxes. Rats will pull goose eggs, or young geese, right out from under the feathers of the goose mother. A fox will go miles to get a sitting goose.
When geese begin to lay, say in February or March, if you are lucky enough to have a broody hens then, you will have to splash eggs with water every day, because a hen doesn’t know this part of goose mother’s duties.
When you have your baby geese, waddling along behind their foster mother the hen, or their real mother the goose, feed them well at first on some meal and protein, but when they are teenage geese they will begin to eat grass. They will live quite well on grass and grow all summer. Straight off grass they will be 'green,' they will not have 'solidity' in them. They won't be fat. Let them go on running out on grass, with no more than the merest handful of corn to lure them in at night, until three weeks before you want to have them for dinner. Some people say two weeks, or even ten days, but three weeks is quite enough. Then you must pen them and give them as much barley as they can eat. If you are going to kill them (or sell them) for Christmas, don't forget they have got to hang for at least a week.
Geese are very easy things to keep; they never get ill; and if you don't want to worry about setting their eggs under hens, they're very good at hatching them out themselves, only you won't get so many geese. But after all, if a family eats half a dozen geese in a year it eats a lot of geese, and that is only half a clutch, so you don't need many geese unless you want to sell them.
The Emden and Toulouse are the two most popular breeds; many African and White Chinese are also raised.
When your geese are fully mature (around six weeks of age), you can move your geese to free-ranged pasture land to make use of their natural foraging feed ability. Not only are geese good at foraging for feed, but it’s also a natural and healthy goose diet.
When they're young, you can feed your geese garden and kitchen vegetable scraps and grass clippings from your lawn. Afterwards, transition your geese to a free-ranged pasture or fenced goose run. Geese like bluegrass, timothy grass, and other types of geese pasture grass. Never feed your geese on chemically-treated pasture land.
If you liked this page, you might also be interested in this page about Raising Chicken or Raising Sheep.
This page is just one of many pages dedicated to sustainable living through organic farming and living wisely. Raising geese will enable you become one step closer to food independance. This is beneficial to your health, peace of mind and lifestyle, great for nature, and reduces your carbon footprint. You can really do it yourself, grow your own food, raise your own animals, from simple means. You can go back to nature and sustainability one step at a time. Today raising geese, tomorrow something else. That's why we have many articles that you can find on the left side of this page to choose from. Each time try to add something to your farm. Sustainable living is your ticket to true freedom. Enjoy the rest of our pages.
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