Food Self-Sufficiency Contest

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Geese are easy to keep and inexpensive to feed. In our climate they prefer no shelter, they eat grass, and the only grain they get is the little they snitch from the hog trough. They should be a very efficient source of meat and eggs, in other words, but—unfortunately—although our goose has laid and faithfully set 15 or 20 eggs in both the spring of '75 and '76 . . . she hasn't yet hatched a single gosling.

A neighbor gave us a pair of Muscovy ducks in return for help with his cattle and the female sets at least twice each season. As clumsy as she appears to be, she handles the job all by herself and, in 1975, she successfully raised 25 ducklings. When butchered at about five months of age, the meat of these birds is exceptionally tasty and tender and—in our opinion—second to none.

We also have some Khaki-Campbell ducks which, according to a USDA pamphlet, have been known to lay 365 eggs per year. Ours aren't nearly that productive, but they do lay well in the spring and they're easy to care for. Our Khakis forage constantly . . . although they do require some grain, particularly during their laying season.

Our guineas were a glaring failure and we feel that we were misled by Countryside magazine's article about them (January 1976, page 35). MOTHER's information on guineas (MOTHER NO. 9, page 42 and MOTHER NO. 22, page 80), however, is fairly accurate and honest.

Guineas certainly are excellent foragers . . . too good, since their favorite foraging territory is the garden. Young seedlings seem to be quite a delicacy in the guinea diet and the birds have a particular affection for any kind of peas, beans, and squash. Guinea fowl can also spot—and pick out—the tiniest speck of pink on a green tomato.

These birds nearly destroyed our hive of bees by roaming the fields and eating a bee from each blooming flower. They also learned to stand in front of the hive and catch the pollen-laden insects as they landed.

Guineas are poor mothers and, contrary to popular belief, have little value as "watchdogs" (they screech all the time, so you never know when a fox is really attacking the chickens). The birds are extremely wary and, after you've killed one, the only way you'll ever harvest the rest is with a rifle. Guineas like to sleep in trees, where they are easily located and killed by owls.

We do agree that guinea meat is delicious. It's perhaps the best meat of all the poultry . . . if eaten young (about the "fryer" or "broiler" stage). Older guinea fowls, however, are truly "tough as a boot".

All in all, guineas haven't been worth the effort for us.

We have three mixed-breed cows that are bred to calve at four-month intervals. The idea was to have one of the three coming fresh and producing between three and four gallons of milk per day early in her lactation on a regular enough schedule to give us a steady supply of milk the year round. We figured that each new calf could have one gallon of the flow every day . . . and we'd use the other two.

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