In winter increase the grain supplement for geese to 20
percent of their diet and give them legume hay or silage
for the rest. They must have roughage. Fresh vegetable tops
and parings should be given when available to your geese in
preference to your pigs or other farm animals.
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Before slaughtering a holiday-dinner goose, put it on a
moist-mash, fattening ration of yellow cornmeal and oats
for a couple of months. Mix equal proportions of each with
buttermilk or skim milk to make the mash wet and extra
fattening. The wet mash should constitute about 50 to 75
percent of the goose's diet, with the rest pasturage or
other green fodder. However, don't switch a goose to a
fattening diet overnight or it might develop digestive
problems. Switch gradually, over a week, particularly if
your geese have been almost exclusively on pasture. In
Europe geese are often force-fed to make them extra plump
and expand the liver. This practice isn't worth it unless
you're a glutton for punishment. Goose eggs, incidentally,
make excellent rubber sink stoppers when fried. You're
better off hatching them or selling them to someone else
who wants to raise geese.
SWANS
If you have a fair-sized pond, a pair of swans, the most
graceful of all waterfowl, may well be worth keeping.
You'll get neither meat nor eggs from them, but they take
next to no care and are esthetically one of the most
beautiful of all avians.
Swans mate for life. So buy a pair if you can. Then step
back. Mate swans are nothing if not ill-tempered.
Eventually they will get to know you and come regularly for
feeding to supplement their diet of water plants and
insects. Even then, it is advised, however, that you make
yourself scarce during mating time. The swans will put
together a large nest of scraps and twigs. Six to eight
greenish-white eggs will be laid and the male will stand
guard over them. He is now ready to attack ... anything
from a cat to an elephant or tractor that approaches the
nest. With luck, you'll have some young swans in six weeks.
But don't be too disappointed if they die young. Swans
often live to sixty years of age ... provided they survive
their first season.
TURKEYS
There's only one sane word of advice to the beginner on the
subject of turkeys. Don't raise them. They are incredibly
stupid birds. So much so in fact that if not patiently
taught to eat, they won't know how and will starve to death
... although once they get the habit, you can't stop them.
They won't even learn to drink unless you keep some marbles
in the water fountain to give them something interesting to
peck at. They are also disease-prone, and have to be
brought in out of the rain or they'll catch their death of
cold ... an exasperating bit of farm routine for the
apprentice during the rainy season. A turkey egg omelet
can be beat ... easily. And so can the
Thanksgiving turkey dinner. I'm all for tradition. But a
modern prepackaged turkey bears no resemblance to the
flavorsome fowl of Pilgrim times. Consider the alternative
... a plump roast goose.
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