How the [Old] Goose is Cooked

What to do with an old goose that has escaped the butcher's knife for several Christmases running? Geese are most tender at the end of their first year, and so we try to get all of a year's hatchlings butchered in the late fall of that same year. That gives them plenty of time to get to a good size, but not enough time to get old and tough. It also means they can get virtually all of their nutrition from pasture, and won't have to be fed grain over the winter.

Yet, every year, it seems that winter hits in full fury before I manage to get the last gosling butchered. There are few things as miserable as standing out in the bitter cold, or a November rain, trying to pluck a goose before one's face and fingers go numb. So, every year, a handful of lucky geese have gotten to survive to see another spring.

And that was okay, up to a point. When we'd get a new batch of goslings, in April or May, we had a whole gaggle of adults all set (and eager) to adopt those goslings and raise them for us. It was only necessary to brood them under a heat lamp for a few days. We'd then turn them loose, and stand back as the adults swept in to take over. After several minutes of the most obnoxiously loud honking you've ever heard, the initiation would be complete. The new goslings were full members of the Fraternity of Goose.

Ever watched a pair of wild Canada geese taking care of their goslings? The adults stand guard for predators, chase off any interlopers, and make sure the young go where they're supposed to go. Now, imagine a whole pack of geese doing the same thing, out in our pasture all summer. It's great fun to watch.

Then, this past winter, things got completely out of control. We were up to 15 adults being over-wintered, and they were eating us out of house and home. Something had to be done. But what? We'd read in Carla Emery's classic Encyclopedia of Country Living that it was best to allow a mature goose to live out its life and die of natural causes. They weren't worth butchering, she said, because they were "as tough as shoe leather."

We believed her.

Emery's book is a fantastic resource, but with 15 adult geese that weren't finding any natural causes to die of, I knew I had to come up with some kind of creative solution. And after a bit of research, I found it: brine.

An experiment with one goose confirmed it, and we've been following this method ever since with great success. We didn't even buy a new batch of goslings this spring; this year, all we're going to do is clear out the old ones.

Here's what we do:

1) Butcher the goose as usual. My preferred method is to tie a piece of bailing twine around both legs, suspend the goose upside down from a nail on a beam in the downstairs part of the barn (dirt floor), slit its throat, and let it bleed to death. Once it's dead, I dunk it in a large pot of scalding water to loosen the feathers. I then hang it back up on the nail, and pluck the feathers (stopping from time to time to dunk the bird in hot water again when necessary). The carcass is then transferred to an outdoor table, where I clean and eviscerate it. Lungs get tossed to the barn cats. Heart and liver get set aside to be added to other poultry hearts and livers (for "heart and liver night"). The other internals are tossed, along with the head, tail, and webbed feet.

2) Instead of freezing the carcass whole, as we do with a young one that we intend to roast, I next carve the goose into pieces: wings, legs, thighs, breasts. The breast meat is the only piece I remove from the bone. I don't remove the skin, because it has a nice layer of fat trapped in and under it.

3) The remaining carcass, including the long neck and other stray pieces of meat (especially the back) gets put directly into a large soup pot. After adding a few similar carcasses from meat chickens that'd been butchered earlier in the summer and frozen, we add water and get a pot of soup going.

4) The goose pieces are rinsed and then put directly into a large Crock Pot. I use a quart jar to measure out just enough water to cover all the pieces. Usually it's 3 quarts. I then add one quarter cup of salt to the Crock Pot for each quart of water, and stir everything up until the salt is totally dissolved.

5) The heavy brine will preserve the meat all by itself, because no organisms can grow in that environment. However, just to be sure, I like to put a lid on the Crock Pot and store it in our extra refrigerator. There it sits for at least a couple of days, with the salt and water penetrating deep inside the meat.

6) Early on the morning of the day we intend to feast on the goose, I pour the brine water out of the Crock Pot. It's important not to dump this salt water in a place that will kill vegetation, or into a drain that goes into a septic tank (where it could kill the bacteria that process septic waste). I then add a half cup or so of apple cider vinegar to the Crock Pot, along with an onion and some spices (basil, thyme, rosemary, etc).

7) I put a lid on the Crock Pot, set it on "High", and let it go all day, occasionally stirring the pieces of goose. As it cooks, the fat melts off the meat and makes a wonderful sauce. [ALTERNATIVE: if you're up late the night before, you can start it going overnight on "Low," and turn it down to "Warm" whenever it's clearly done.]

8) At dinner time, I remove the meat, which is by now so tender it's falling off the bone. We arrange the meat on a platter, toss the bones and skin, pour the liquid into a gravy boat, and serve. Any leftover meat and gravy can be added directly into the soup pot (which by now has of course been finished cooking, and has been sitting in the refrigerator, for a day or two.)

We prepared an old gander this way, for yesterday's Sunday dinner, and it was absolutely delicious. This is probably the third or fourth of the old geese I've done so far this Spring / Summer, so there's still a whole bunch more to butcher. We'll most likely over-winter three females, and get a fresh batch of goslings in the spring for them to adopt. At least there's no rush; at this point, they're simply eating grass out in the pasture and not really costing us anything. I just want to make sure I get them done before it gets too cold this fall.

Looks like we'll have lots of good eating between now and then.

Gosling Adoption 2014

Last Thursday morning, we got a shipment of ten White Embden goslings from Murray McMurray Hatchery. There are cheaper sources, but we've been impressed with McMurray's service and quality. Above all, their website makes it very easy to know which birds are available on which days, and exactly when to expect those birds to arrive; other hatcheries are decidedly behind the curve on this. Given that we were raising a series of different types of birds, and planning their arrival around a couple of out-of-town trips, having a firm grip on the timing was worth a few extra dollars to me.

One gosling did die in the brooder over the weekend, but we had nine strong survivors as of this morning. The brooder, with its heat lamp, is an important way to get young birds off to a good start. It also gives a chance to get several days worth of high protein feed into the birds.

During colder times of the year, baby birds can spend up to two weeks in there as they develop feathers. We had a pretty chilly weekend, but things are now warming up, so today looked like a good opportunity to move the goslings outside.

They're still not feathered, of course, but we've found that the adult geese do such a good job mothering them...if the temperature outside is reasonable, the goslings will generally be fine. The mother geese "know" when it's too cold, and lead their little brood into the barn. At night, they draw the goslings into a tight bundle and keep them warm.

For the actual gosling turn-over, I first drove all the mature geese into the pasture. (We have more mature geese than usual, because I didn't get them all butchered last year. Thank the early, nasty winter for that.) I then brought the goslings out in a cardboard box, tipped the box over, and let the goslings stream out.

What happens next is always so much fun to watch, words don't really do it justice. The mature geese go into an absolute frenzy, surrounding the goslings, honking and shaking their feathers, as if conducting a fraternity hazing. This year, I managed to catch the event on video. (Apologies for the shakiness and rapid zooming in Part 1; I was still trying to figure out the controls on my new phone. I was also trying to follow them into the pasture.)

In Part 1, the goslings have just streamed toward the mature flock, and the flock goes crazy welcoming them:



Part 2 shows the middle and end of the welcoming ceremony. After this, the whole gaggle heads deep into the pasture to continue bonding:


As of right now, they're all still at the far end of the pasture. Almost all of the mature geese are busy grazing on fresh green swamp grass. The best, most reliable, most dedicated mother goose (a Gray Toulouse) has again volunteered for primary gosling duty: she has gone up on the sunny ridge with her little pack of yellow fuzz, where she can no doubt keep a watchful eye on everything.

Including me. I can't get anywhere near close enough for a picture now. Here's what I managed to snap when they were closer to the barn:

Why so blurry? Because these guys are in constant motion. Especially when they see me coming.

Gosling Initiation

We've been raising a batch of ducklings and goslings in the brooder for the last two weeks, and are preparing to move them to a pasture pen (as soon as I can butcher the last four broilers that are in it...hopefully this afternoon).

Given our past success with gosling adoption, I decided to take six of the new ones out to our flock of mature geese. As I approached, they backed away warily. Then, the instant I set the box of goslings down and released the little ones, the entire mature flock began honking at the top of their lungs. The goslings sprinted toward the big birds, the big birds gathered around the little ones, lowered their necks, and continued honking. And honking. And honking.

I went to the house and got a camera. They were still honking when I returned, initiating the little ones into the Fraternity of Goose. I managed to get this brief video:

A half hour later, they've quieted down. But it looks like we may have pulled off another successful gosling adoption. Given how much grass is out there, it's good to have all the more beaks at work now on the ground.

Awesome Birds

We have had geese almost from the beginning of our great farming adventure, and even named our place in Illinois "Rolling Goose Farm." These awesome birds have been on my mind recently, and I wanted to say a word or two about them --- especially for those who might be thinking ahead to the coming growing season. Assuming this crazy deep freeze we've been in literally all year ever thaws.

Every small farm ought to have some chickens. They're the easiest birds to raise, and provide both eggs and meat. And you can put them in a tractor pen to till/fertilize garden beds before planting and after harvest.

After chickens, though, I'd recommend geese. They're on my mind because we cooked one up the weekend before last, for some dinner guests, and I'm still thinking about how good it was. I'd gone out and butchered a young gander on Saturday, and then we roasted it fresh on Sunday. It weighed about ten pounds, dressed out, and even (barely) fit into the largest cast iron dutch oven. It was the perfect size to provide an all-you-can-eat meal for two average sized families (four adults and six kids), with enough left over to make a big pot of soup for a couple of dinners during the week. When you serve a goose up like this, it's almost guaranteed to make a memorable impression for a guest --- for the simple reason that most Americans have never experienced it. And certainly not a fresh, young, domestic goose (as opposed to an old Canada goose that's flown back and forth to South America five times and is as tough as shoe leather).

Geese may sound exotic to Americans, as they originally did to us, but they're very simple to prepare. I smear a light layer of olive oil all over it, then sprinkle the whole bird with salt, pepper, garlic, and basil. In then goes into a roasting pan or dutch oven, and I toss in a chopped onion. Put a little water in the bottom of the pan, and it's ready to go in the oven (covered) at 350F. If it's a large roasting pan, I'll wait about an hour and then add diced potatoes all around the bird, stirring in the wonderful rich "goose grease" that's melted so far. If the goose is in a smaller roasting pan or dutch oven, I begin the potatoes in our Crock Pot much earlier, with some olive oil and basic seasonings. Once a nice amount of fat has melted off the goose, I pour it into the Crock Pot and mix thoroughly with the potatoes. (I baste the goose with the remaining grease.)

Unless you've experienced it, it's difficult to describe just how delicious this melted goose fat is. It can even be saved and used as a bread spread, or in any number of other ways. When I'm putting the soup on at the end of the night, I make sure I scrape every drop out of the roasting pan and into the soup pot with a spatula. The richness it adds to the soup will kick your eyes wide open the first time you try it.

And the birds are neither difficult nor expensive to raise. Yes, goslings cost quite a bit to buy. Ten bucks each from our local feed store, but they can be had for less if you shop around. Cackle Hatchery, for example, offers sixteen White Embden goslings for $117, which works out to $7.35 before shipping. It's the same price for Gray Toulouse goslings, which is the other meat breed we recommend.

That appears to be quite a bit more than a broad breasted turkey poult, which yields much more meat than a goose. But once the birds are out of the brooder, the advantage tips the other direction. The turkey has been bred to require lots of high protein supplemental feed. The goose, by contrast, will do quite well on nothing but grass (we do let them have some supplemental grain, especially after the grass dies, to fatten them up a little). And while the turkeys are stupid and need plenty of supervision, geese are highly self-reliant. The gaggle can even fight off predators up to the size of foxes and small dogs. Geese can be left out in a pasture for long periods of time, and will be happy as long as they have grass, shade, and water. Our mature geese adopt the young goslings within minutes of release from the brooder, and quickly incorporate them into the flock. They're also very cold hardy; we've never had one freeze to death, even when the temp in their outbuilding has plunged below zero.

They're best butchered and eaten in their first year; we've heard they can get tough with age, so we haven't even tried eating the mature geese. I imagine they'd still make very good stock and soup, but they're so fun to watch and so easy to keep (and just eat grass for so much of the year), we've preferred to just let them live.

The one big hassle with geese is plucking them. There's a reason geese are so cold hardy: they have a ton of small, downy, impenetrable feathers all up and down their front. Even when we had an excellent mechanical plucker, the geese took longer than any other bird to get all the feathers off of. And getting the very last feathers off, for a perfectly clean-looking carcass, is extremely difficult no matter what equipment you're using. Plunging the dead goose into a big pot of scalding water makes the job easier, but it's still much harder than plucking a chicken or turkey. Waterfowl have oily feathers designed to repel water ("like water off a duck's back"), so it takes some work to get the scalding water all the way down to the skin. I find it helps to dry pluck some feathers, to open up the chest and belly a little, before plunging the bird into the water.

Which brings us to marketing your geese. Our family doesn't care if there are a few small downy feathers on the bird; they disappear once it's in the oven, anyhow. If you're planning to sell the geese, however, make sure your customers understand this and feel the same way. Most will be quite understanding --- they will be overjoyed just finding someone with fresh, natural, farm-raised goose for sale. But you don't want confusion or questions about why the bird isn't perfect-looking. And you really don't want to have to go over the bird with a pair of tweezers, extracting every last tiny little feather you can find.

How much can you get for a goose? We've charged $5/pound, dressed weight, or $50 for the typical bird (they can grow larger if you feed them more grain, but you have to pay for that grain), and customers don't blink. In most states, you'll have to sell directly from your farm to the consumer. No restaurants, supermarkets, or shipping across state lines. Otherwise, you'll need to have the birds butchered at a USDA facility, and there are very few of those that will touch waterfowl. Which is why geese are so hard to find at the supermarket or even in restaurants. And why word of mouth that you have geese for sale will spread among those who really appreciate these delicious birds, and are willing to pay for a special holiday dinner centerpiece. Most of our calls have come from Europeans, among whom goose is a much more common holiday tradition. A simple posting on sites like Eat Wild or Local Harvest will get you plenty of calls. And, using the costs above, selling just three geese more than pays for 16 goslings. There are feed costs, of course, but the other 13 goslings are essentially yours for free.

We're no longer actively marketing our geese; we've been too busy, and for the time being are satisfied keeping them for ourselves and serving them to dinner guests. But whether you're looking for a nice product to pay some of your farm bills, or just a delicious centerpiece neither you nor your guests will forget, geese are an excellent bird to try.

Surprises never Cease

First we had Dot's surprise, out-of-season lamb. We're still hopeful that she'll get big enough and wooly enough before winter sets in. Thus far, she's been doing great.

This new situation, however, was perhaps even less expected:
Yes, that's Lucy Goosie. And she's made a nest. In October. Out in the middle of the pasture.

I wasn't even aware she was laying eggs, but she'd been quietly collecting them out there. She now has about a half dozen. A few days ago, she went broody and will only come off the nest for quick breaks.

I don't want to move the nest into the barn; she'd almost certainly abandon the eggs if I did. I'm not even sure the goslings are developing, given the cold weather we've had. And even if they hatch, what are their odds of survival in late October or early November?

I can be certain of this: if I trash the nest, they'll die for sure. If I don't trash the nest, we may get some surprise goslings. The thing I'm most concerned about is Lucy Goosie's safety out there in the middle of the night. In Illinois, we lost a few broody geese to coyotes. Fortunately, there aren't any of those around here. Foxes, raccoons and possums are a concern, but an adult goose defending a nest is a pretty tough fighter.

I'd lay my bets on Lucy, if it came to that. And her nest is near enough to the house, I'd be able to hear her alarm honk and come to her assistance.

Still, it's tough to shake the feeling that this isn't going to end well. But we'll see. Around here, we never seem to run out of surprises.

Our Great Goose Group

Our property seems ideally suited for geese. Lots of grassy pasture, with a big low wet area that's fairly swampy even all summer. I'm glad we got lots of extra goslings this year, because with this much grass they're basically free to feed once they're out of the brooder. A goose is a nice-sized meal for our family, yielding all the meat everyone wants, plus leftovers. And there's nothing as delightful as the "goose grease" that melts off a roasted bird. We save it in quart mason jars in the fridge.

We had 14 goslings out there for a long time, plus one little hatchling, and the four mature geese. They're a mixed bag of Toulouse and Embden. We lock them in the barn with the sheep and chickens at night. Then, a few nights ago, we had a bizarre incident: one of the juvenile goslings got his/her long neck tangled all up in some of the barn's interior fencing. I discovered this when I came out to lock up for the night. Much like what happened with our dairy goat, Marigold, the bird got so wrapped  it ended up committing suicide. The goose's body was still warm, so he/she couldn't have been dead long. But I couldn't revive it. A tragic and completely unforseeable waste, but the kind of thing that a stupid animal can do.

So, we have 13 remaining juveniles, and the little hatchling, and the four mature adults...and they make quite a group. Really remarkable how they've bonded as a unit. There's a mature Embden gander who's definitely the Alpha. There's one mature Toulouse who's the "mother" to the little gosling and makes sure he/she keeps up. Especially interesting is that when I or one of the dogs comes out and approaches the group, she positions herself in such a way that the little one is very hard to see. Even as they're running, the shape of her body often makes the little one disappear. That's good for him/her, but tough for me to keep track of. In the photo below, note the mother has positioned herself between me and the gosling, as the gaggle hurries toward the pasture.

They're all so entertaining as they work the pasture, we could watch them and their interactions for hours.

But as the juveniles are maturing, we have a new concern: telling them apart from the mature adults. This is important, because older geese are not good to eat. The meat is tough as shoe leather, so our preference is to let them live out their lives once they're more than a year old. We intend to butcher all of the juveniles this November/December, so we need to be able to identify them. Many are now almost as big as the adults, and fully feathered. Before they get any more mature, I needed to mark certain members of the gaggle.

The solution: I caught the four mature adults, one at a time, and put a heavy duty "rip tie" (or "zip" tie, or "cable" tie, or whatever you prefer calling it) around each leg, just above the knee. I left it just loose enough for more leg growth, but tight enough not to slip off. (I did both legs so we'd have a backup in case one came off.) I then trimmed the excess plastic.

Scooter had a grand time helping me chase particular geese down in the pasture. And he was indeed a big help. Border Collies are indispinsible when you have livestock. His instincts and abilities never fail to blow me away, especially since he's had no training.

Hopefully all the rip ties will hold, and we'll be able to keep these four mature adults to raise another gaggle of goslings next year. And enjoy lots of delicious roast goose this winter.

Stray Gosling

We've been allowing the adult geese to maintain a nest with a few eggs in it for the last couple of months. Nothing has hatched, but they've continued to take turns laying the occasional egg. Yesterday, I was on the verge of tossing all their eggs, destroying the nest, and forcing them to do something more productive (like mow the grass and look after those 14 hatchery goslings that the rest of the gaggle has adopted).

Then something interesting happened last night. A couple of days ago, we had yet another Buff Orpington hen hatch out a brood of chicks. She has five, and she moved them to within a few feet of where the geese have been taking turns sitting on eggs. As I was closing up the barn, I took a final glance at her before turning off the lights. Something seemed strange. One of her babies didn't look exactly like a chick. And it didn't peep like a chick. And she was pecking at it, like it wasn't hers.

I took a closer look, and discovered it was a gosling! Totally dried off and fuzzy, so it'd been hatched for some time. And it was mobile. The mother goose began hissing at me, and I pushed the gosling in her direction. She took it under her for the night, and I closed up the barn.

This morning, there are still no more goslings. And that one gosling was off the nest and trying to follow Mother Orpington out the door with her brood. I again returned the gosling to its rightful nest, but am wondering how long this can continue. If the mother goose will not get off the nest and brood the gosling, he/she won't survive for long. The hatchery goslings are much too big for this new gosling to keep up with, and they go way out in the high weeds to forage all day.

If there's no change later today, I'm leaning heavily toward putting the gosling under Mother Orpington tonight in the dark, and seeing if we can pull off a cross-species adoption. The chicks are still so small, it just might work. Otherwise, I'll have to put the gosling in a brooder and raise him/her myself.

Other thoughts?

One Big Goosie Family

We let Lucy Goosie try hatching some eggs, but (as expected) she seems to have failed. Our backup plan was to buy some goslings, brood them, and then turn them over to the geese to raise.

That seems to have been the ticket. We've had 15-20 or so goslings in the brooder, and then in a pasture pen with ducklings, for a couple of weeks now. But that pasture pen is getting crowded, so today I decided to try releasing ten goslings into pasture with the adult geese.

Our big hissy gander immediately stepped forward and claimed the goslings. Lucy Goosie wasn't far behind. The goslings, for their part, have been stuck in their new parents' gravitational pull all day. Remarkable how deep the instincts run, in both the adults and the goslings: the adults sense that these little creatures are "theirs," the the goslings somehow know to follow the big geese and not the big ducks running around in the same pasture. And the big ducks, for their part, are showing no interest at all in the goslings. And, just like in the wild, both the goose and the gander raise the young together as a joint project.

Loads of fun watching the adult geese leading their new little brood around the pasture, grazing. I'm going to release the rest of the goslings tomorrow.

Don't Mess with Lucy

Lucy Goosie, that is!

One of our White Embden females has gone broody in the last week, so we began collecting goose eggs from the other females which were still laying. She'd made a nest in a secure location, and was hissy as all get-out about keeping people away from it, so we were confident about giving her some eggs to hatch.

Here she is, under the barn steps, defending to the death the eight eggs we've given her.

Just don't get close to her. That long neck can reach a lot longer than you'd think. And she's got one powerful set of jaws.

Don't ask me how I found out.

Goose Eggs

For those interested in the productivity of geese as egg layers, I have some preliminary numbers. Today we got Egg #12 from our yearling Embden goose; she was hatched last April, and this is her 20th day of laying. Goose eggs are so big, a single one makes a meal for an average person (and when cooking, we treat goose eggs as we would two or three chicken eggs).

We've enjoyed goose eggs for many years, but I've never before been able to keep track of a single bird's productivity; in the past, we've always had multiple geese laying at the same time in the same area. But as far as we can tell, the yearling Embden is the only one currently laying. We'll keep you posted on her production, but so far we've been very pleased with what we've been getting --- especially given how bitterly cold it's been here in Michigan, and the number of days the birds have been totally confined to the barn.

Goose Day

It looks like this, the final day of 2009, might go down as "Goose Day" on our farm.

Earlier this week, we were down to five geese: the two older Toulouse females, and three Embdens from this spring's hatch. One very nice thing about having different breeds of geese each year is that it's easy to determine their age; once a goose gets more than about a year old, it isn't really worth butchering (the meat gets too tough). Anyway, I'd been meaning to butcher those final three Embdens, but Yeoman Farm Baby's adoption interfered. That proved to be a good thing, as it gave us time to do more thinking about geese and where we want to go with them.

I took a closer look at those three Embdens, and determined we had two males and one female. The female was definitely a keeper. One of those ganders was very large, and clearly exhibited Alpha Goose qualities; the other gander was no larger than the female. Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I decided it would make most sense to butcher the Beta gander and feast on it during the Christmas Octave, and to keep Alpha as a breeder.

Although we haven't had any success with hatching our own goslings in the past, we believe we can help the geese make more effective nests this spring. Back in Illinois, the problem was that after a goose went broody and we gave her a clutch of eggs to sit on, hens would inevitably sneak onto that nest and lay eggs of their own every time the goose got up to take a break. When Lucy Goosie would return to the nest, she'd crush the chicken eggs. This made a nasty, sticky mess and soon the goose eggs were coated with mud and straw. But here in Michigan, our barn is laid out such that we can give a broody goose a nice private area that chickens cannot violate. This spring, we'll see if we can make that work. Goslings are so expensive (nine bucks each, at last check), there's certainly no harm in trying. We will still buy some goslings, just to make sure we have goose to feast on next year, but hopefully our breeders will be able to add to that flock.

Anyway, this morning I went out to the barn to take care of the chores...and discovered that our Embden female had just laid her first egg! The shell was tinged with blood, and an examination of her rear end showed that she hadn't laid it long before. Hopefully we'll get several dozen eggs from her before she goes broody; I'm going to wait at least a couple more months before we even begin saving eggs for her to sit on. In the meantime, we will enjoy eating those goose eggs; each one is large enough to make its own omelet. (The photo is from last year, when I had a couple of goose eggs and wanted to show their size relative to a chicken egg.) When we have extras, we sell them to a Ukrainian woman who blows them out to use for crafts.

I really can't say enough good things about geese; most breeds (other than Canadas) lay several dozen huge eggs each winter/spring, will lay for many years, can get to a good eating size on little other than grass, provide many pounds of meat, are extremely cold hardy, and are fierce enough to defend themselves against most predators. If you want to feed them grain, they will eventually reach live weights of 20# or more --- but the grass-fed fall size (dressed weight of six to ten pounds) has always been plenty for our family. As long as you have a way to keep them out of the garden, and off the grass you want to let your children play on, I highly recommend them for every farmstead.

A Different Kind of Adoption

This may seem like an odd move, but bear with me. I'd like to merge two recent streams of posts: our adoption of Yeoman Farm Baby, and the natural hatching/brooding of baby birds on the farm.

I've enjoyed the comments and input from various readers, who have asked about and shared their experiences with allowing various types of birds to hatch and brood their own young. Whether you're doing this for the educational experience, the economics, to fly under the radar of NAIS, or purely for the entertainment value...hatching your own baby birds is a wonderful experience and I highly recommend it. But the unfortunate reality is that many good egg layers don't make good nest setters. And many good nest setters don't make good mothers. With broodiness and mothering instincts having been so aggressively culled by commercial hatcheries, it's remarkable to find a bird that can both hatch and successfully mother her own young.

One answer that we've found to this problem: adoption! Unlike larger mammals, mother birds are not terribly particular about which babies are "theirs." A good mother hen will look after and brood any chicks she can get her wings around. We saw this happen frequently in Illinois, when on occasion we had multiple brood hens in the barn at the same time. It was actually fairly amusing to watch as days passed, and the brood of the less interested hen gradually shrank while the brood of the more aggressive/interested hen gradually increased. I still remember one hen that ended up with something like eighteen chicks streaming across the yard with her (which was actually too many --- even she couldn't keep track of that many chicks, and they kept getting lost. And I kept venturing out to help, because there's nothing quite as forlorn as the peeping of a stray chick stranded in the tall grass).

We've observed something similar with ducklings. We've had several ducks of various breeds successfully hatch a nest of eggs, with even greater variability in mothering ability. The Muscovies have been by far the best setters and mothers, with Cayugas a close second. The Khaki Campbells are not bad at setting, but we have yet to see one successfully mother her hatchlings. Every Khaki that has ventured off the nest with a brood has quickly lost every single duckling. Khakis don't look back to see if the ducklings are keeping up, and they don't respond to distress calls from little ones who have fallen behind. We got to the point where we would immediately remove any ducklings a Khaki hatched, and either give them to a mother Cayuga (assuming we had one with new ducklings) or brood them ourselves under a heat lamp.

BTW, I don't say any of this to diss Khakis or Muscovies: they have their place, and Khakis are extremely good egg producers. We had a lot of Khakis when we were producing duck eggs commercially in Illinois, and at one time had a good flock of Muscovies. But we've chosen Cayugas as our primary homestead duck because their egg production is respectable, they are good natural setters/mothers, and they get to a nice eating size. We ultimately decided against Muscovies in part because the females are too small to make much of a meal, but also because Mrs Yeoman Farmer thinks those "caruncles" the males have on their faces/heads are disgusting to look at (not to mention the bizarre social behavior that Muscovies engage in when they're together in groups. I still keep a few Muscovies, just for fun (and where MYF doesn't have to look at them), but they're now too old to good for much of anything.

We've never had very good luck getting a non-broody hen or duck to accept and mother baby birds --- but geese are different. Earlier this year, we bought several goslings from a hatchery and brooded them under heat lamps for some time. Then, when we turned the goslings loose in the pasture, something amazing happened: our two older Gray Toulouse geese swooped in and adopted all eight of them. They proved to be excellent mothers, and took great care of the brood all summer. They were extremely protective, and dutifully led their charges to fresh grass and water (and stood guard attentively as the goslings grazed). The lesson we took from that incident: next year, we will put the goslings in with the mature geese much sooner. Perhaps not as brand new hatchings, but hopefully after significantly less time under the electric heat lamps. I may also try giving the geese a few ducklings at the same time, to see how that works out.

Because adoption need not be limited to the same species! We've had real life "ugly ducklings" hatched on our farm; one of the hens laid an egg in a duck nest when the duck was taking a quick break. Chicken eggs have a shorter incubation period than duck eggs, and the chick ended up emerging along with the ducklings. He/she managed to keep up with the web-footed siblings for several days, but the problem was when Mother Duck took her little charges through puddles. We eventually had to remove the chick for that reason, but it probably would've worked out alright had the mother been a hen and the adopted bird been a duckling. And I bet a goose would be an even better mother to a duckling than a hen would be.

A final thought, for those of you interested in hatching your own eggs: try to find a broody bird to do it for you. We've never had much luck with the commercially-available incubators. We did get some chicken eggs to hatch in them, but usually the temperature ended up a little too high or a little too low (or both, when the air didn't circulate properly). But we never got turkey eggs, duck eggs, or goose eggs to hatch; waterfowl eggs have special humidity requirements (picture a mother duck sitting back down on the nest after taking a quick swim), and humidity is difficult to adjust in most of the more affordable incubators. We decided a long time ago to give up on incubators altogether, and either purchase baby birds or let a broody hen/duck hatch them for us.

Geese

Geese are wonderful farm birds. Although goslings are fairly expensive, the finished birds get to a nice weight --- and, most importantly, they can do it with relatively little grain. Our geese spend almost all of their time out in the pasture, eating little other than grass. They do swipe some grain from the egg laying hens, when they're locked in the barn at night, but we're fine with that. Grain helps the geese put on a little more weight --- and, most importantly, develop a nice layer of fat.

A woman from Ohio writes with some questions, after having raised her first batch of geese; I sent her a personal response, but in so doing realized that her note (and my reply) would be worth sharing with all of my readers. With her permission, here is her question and my response [I have edited both a bit]:

Hello, This is my first year raising geese. I have the Pilgrim breed. Being that I am so new to this, did I wait too long to butcher them at 7 months? Would they have been OK to process at 6 months? The processor was concerned about them not having pin feathers, which they didn't. But would they have grown out their pin feathers at 6 months or sooner? My birds have free access to pasture (in with steer) and also to free-choice mixed grains with 1/3 pellets mixed in. Do you think that I should not have offered them the grains during the peak pasture season (on unimproved, possibly less palatable, pasture)?



We did pilgrims once; they are a nice-sized bird, and have the unusual trait of being naturally sex-linked; in other words, the males and females can be distinguished by the color of their feathers. Pilgrims also have a reputation for being good natural mothers, which also appealed to us. Unfortunately, they turned out to be "too good" at mothering, and made nests out in the yard...where they got picked off by predators. In the years since, we gave up on trying to get geese to hatch their own goslings --- and stuck with Embdens, because they get larger faster. And they have a nicer temperament than some other breeds (like White Chinese).

The writer's time frame for butchering is perfectly fine. We raise them to the same age she did; I just butchered a bunch, myself. They're delicious at this age. If she'd waited until next spring, that's when they'd start to get tough. I wouldn't have expected pin feathers at the age she butchered them. The geese may have been okay to eat at 6 months, but my opinion is "the bigger the better." I have three more that we're keeping alive, to butcher for eating fresh at Christmas. They'll be 9 months old then, but in our experience that's always been fine.

Our geese are mostly out in pasture with the sheep, but get some supplemental grain when they steal it from the laying hens in the barn. We keep them separate much of the time, but geese definitely have a mind of their own. As long as they're mostly on pasture, grain is good for their development, and helps them reach a bigger size. I think it also helps them develop some fat --- which is absolutely wonderful when it melts off a slow-roasted goose, and can be used for cooking potatoes or spread on bread. The only reason we don't give them more grain is the expense of it. We have a huge pasture, and the geese love grass, so we figure we're saving money by letting them graze it. We also have a naturally wet, semi-swampy area in the pasture that they enjoy.

The writer indicated that she had sent the geese out to a butcher for processing. In her case, that makes sense because her time is worth more to her than the cost of butchering (much like the calculation we have made about butchering lambs or goats.) But if you're not too squeamish about it, I'd strongly encourage you try butchering your own birds. It doesn't require much special equipment, and geese are still small enough to be manageable. (i.e. it's not like butchering a cow or pig). We tie a cord around both legs, hang them from a nail or tree branch, then slit the throat and let them bleed to death. Geese bleed out very fast. The only problem with geese is that it's hard to get all those feathers off. We find that dunking them in very hot water helps a lot to loosen those feathers. Still a chore, but we enjoy doing it ourselves.

When Coons Attack

A nasty surprise greeted me this morning when I went out to the barn to do chores: we'd clearly had a raccoon attack overnight.

I noticed something amiss as soon as I let the sheep out into their paddock (and from there out to the pasture). There were white feathers all over the paddock, but especially strong concentrations of them in a direct line from the barn to a certain part of the fence. A moment later, my worst fears were confirmed: our flock of geese came honking out of the barn to be let out to pasture with the sheep, and a quick head count revealed only seven White Embdens --- one short. They, and the two mature gray geese which have adopted them, all looked fine.

Once they were in the pasture with the sheep, I took a closer look at the carnage and tried to figure out what had happened overnight. There was a heavy concentration of white feathers in a small gap where one of the barn doors doesn't fit tightly to the old stone wall. None of the birds have escaped through that gap, so I haven't worried about plugging it. However, the geese often do sleep next to that door, on the inside of the barn of course, at night. One of them may very well have been sound asleep just inside that gap when the coon came prowling. He seemed to have reached in, grabbed hold of a leg or neck, and forced the struggling goose out through the gap.

The feathers led in a trail diagonally from that gap to a corner of the paddock fence. As Scooter and I followed that trail, we got confirmation of the culprit: we found a severed goose head (not pictured). Decapitation is a signature killing style for raccoons.

The coon then seems to have forced the dead goose through the fence --- no small feat, as the fence has such small holes that live geese never have been able to push their way through.

I continued tracking the feathers through the hay field, and found the place where the goose had been disemboweled and consumed. (Again, not pictured.) Then the feather trail petered out.

Geese are usually pretty ferocious animals, and a flock of them can easily repel predators even as large as foxes. This is the first goose we've lost to a predator in many years; the only other victims have been broody geese who were sitting alone on nests outside of an enclosure.

It's amazing how sneaky that coon was, pulling the goose right out of the barn the way he did. I had no idea that something could fit through that little gap...but I suppose that if you're a coon, and you're hungry enough, you'll try anything.

Guess what The Yeoman Farmer's first repair task will be this morning?

Gosling Adoption

We tried for several years to get our geese to hatch their own goslings, but were never successful. Goslings are fairly expensive to purchase (nowadays going for eight or nine dollars each, not counting shipping), so we didn't give up easily. But what would inevitably happen is that a goose would make her nest --- and then another goose would make her nest right next to it. And then other geese would climb in there to lay, and soon there were far too many eggs for the broody geese to cover. And then a chicken or two would lay eggs in the goose nest, and the goose would return before I discovered those eggs. The weight of the goose would crush them, coating all the goose eggs with sticky egg fluid. The nest material would then encrust itself all over the goose eggs.

I think it might've worked if we'd had just one or two geese, plus a gander, and been able to isolate their nests in a private area away from all other birds. We ended up concluding it was easier to simply purchase new goslings.

Which we did again this year. As reported in recent posts, they've been doing wonderful work busting sod for Mrs Yeoman Farmer's new garden beds. Yesterday, however, we ran out of sod for them to consume. I turned the eight surviving goslings loose in the pasture, and after a bit of orientation (and time to overcome their shock at suddenly being surrounded by so much green stuff), they went to work mowing down high weeds along the fence.

And then something interesting happened. Our two mature geese (which we kept because they are too old to butcher; we sell their eggs to a woman who paints them for crafts) eventually emerged from the barn, and slowly made their way toward the goslings. One of the geese seemed especially interested in this new little group, and approached them with her neck extended and head lowered. When she reached them, she shook all her feathers (making herself look bigger and more imposing), and then hissed at me and the dog. Within moments, all eight goslings were following her around. She hissed and honked at every nearby animal, and made little maternal honking noises to urge her little brood to move in the direction she wanted.

A day later, the new goose family is still all sticking together. They slept together in a group in the barn last night, and have been inseparable in the pasture.

You know that expression about "birds of a feather"? Truer than you might think.

And I think we'll be keeping "Mother Goose" for at least one more year. Craft sales of her eggs have more than paid for her keep...and how do you compute the entertainment value we got yesterday?

Waterfowl at Work

I recently blogged about how the "chicken tractors" have been helping us get Mrs Yeoman Farmer's garden ready. As the young birds grow older, they seem to eat more weeds and drop more fertilizer by the day. And as I type this, MYF is out in the garden beginning to till some of the garden beds.

The one pen with 15 ducklings and 9 goslings has been particularly productive. As waterfowl are voracious consumers of grass, we thought it made sense to put them in charge of clearing sod from the brand new beds we want to plow up in the lawn.

After just over one week, moving the pen basically once per day, take a look at what they've been able to accomplish:

This is a classic example of sustainable agriculture, and working with nature rather than declaring war on it. And we will enjoy remembering this lesson as we feast on goose all winter long.

Lots of New Arrivals

It was a busy day on the farm, with new animals arriving left and right.

The first batch was planned long in advance: our new baby poultry. The local feed store pooled orders from many customers, and placed a bulk order with a nearby hatchery. Today, all the newly-hatched birds arrived, so Homeschooled Farm Girl (HFG) and I drove into town to pick them up.

We bought 10 White Embden goslings, 40 Buff Orpington pullet chicks, and 30 mixed-gender broad breasted meat bird chicks. Actually, ten of the pullets and ten of the meat birds are for another family; they recently moved to the country, but don't have a brooder facility set up yet. Since we'd have to run the same heat lamps no matter how many chicks we were brooding, we offered to take care of the other family's chicks until they're old enough to go outside. They'll reimburse us something for the feed, and everyone will be happy.

Speaking of feed, the feed store had a terrific deal: for every bag of chick starter feed you buy, you can have ten free meat bird chicks. Since I knew we'd need at least three bags anyway, this deal was a total no-brainer. We got all thirty of our meat bird chicks free; these things cost at least $1.20 at the feed store that sells them, and even more than that when ordered by mail. The three bags of feed cost us $28.65, so we're definitely coming out ahead.

Remember those pastured poultry pens that we had the turkeys in last year? Once all the turkeys were butchered, Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I moved the pens into the barn for the winter. Looking at them, I realized they would make ideal brooders this Spring. We spread a tarp under them, to protect the wooden floor from chicken droppings, and then added some loose straw for bedding. Last night, I hooked up two heat lamps in one pen (for the 70 chicks) and one lamp (for the goslings) in the other. I then set up some waterers, turned on the heat lamps, and made sure they were generating enough warmth for the babies. When HFG and I got home with our boxes of birds, everything was set to go. She helped me unload them from the boxes, and made each bird got a drink of water before releasing it. (She also cuddled quite a few of them before handing them over, but that's another story.)

Anyway, here are the chicks:

And the goslings:

Our barn cats have been stalking the pens (think Sylvester and Tweetie Bird); looking at all the small birds, a couple of the cats have facial expressions like they've died and gone to feline heaven. As a result, we're taking extra special care to ensure there are no gaps in the lids or other ways for cats to get in.

As if all these new birds weren't enough, Dot (our leader ewe, and matriarch of the flock) delivered twins for us. She turns ten years old this Spring, and isn't showing any signs of slowing down. She did an expert job, as always, and both lambs were quickly up and nursing like pros.

It was a mixed-gender set of twins. As this is Spy Wednesday, my first inclination was to name them Julius and Ethel --- but I figured that would be way too esoteric. And MYF would probably veto it.

I thought that would be it for new animals. Then, late this afternoon, HFG came running in excitedly from the barn with news that yet another ewe was in labor. HFG had been eagerly anticipating actually watching a lamb's birth, so she immediately turned around and ran back to the barn --- and then stayed there with the ewe for quite some time. Eventually, she returned with news of the latest happy arrival in the lambing pen: one beautiful male lamb.

With four ewes delivered, and six lambs on the ground, we are exactly at our historical lambing percentage of 150%. If the four remaining ewes can keep this up, we'll hopfully be blessed with twelve lambs. Given Dot's age, we will probably keep a couple of the best females --- including the one born today --- as replacement breeders. But if all goes well, we should still have lots of delicious lamb for the freezer this winter.

Don't Mess with the Goose

We're down to two geese, and both of them are a few years old. We got some eggs from them this spring, but they've stopped laying for the year. For various reasons (especially that we still have several geese in the freezer), we decided not to raise any this year. Older geese are tough as shoe leather, so I've been thinking about butchering them and boiling them for 24 hours to make soup.

One thing I love about geese: they can be tough as shoe leather even when they're still alive. Last night, both of them remained outside the barn when I locked up and secured all the other animals. "Suit yourselves," I muttered, looking at the two of them sitting stubbornly in the chicken/sheep enclosure behind the barn. I went in the house and went to bed.

Not three minutes after my head hit the pillow, I heard one of the geese making a terrific racket. It was definitely a fighting noise, and so loud it traveled all the way across our property. I thought for a moment, and then threw on some clothes, grabbed a high powered flashlight, and ran to the barn.

One goose was still in the enclosure, looking as indignant as a goose can look, and the other one had flown over the fence into the pasture. Whipping the light around a bit more, I found the perp: a fox was slipping through the fence and slinking out into the hay field. Kicking myself for not having taken the shotgun from our bedroom closet on my way down, I ran to my office for the backup 12-gauge I keep there.

By the time I loaded the shotgun and circled the barn, the fox was about halfway across the hay field. He turned and looked at me, his eyes lighting up in the night and making him an easy target --- if only I had a way to keep the huge spotlight on him while handling a shotgun. [Note to self: Next shotgun must be one with a mount for a tactical light.] Necessity being the mother of invention, I wedged the spotlight between my legs and managed to get it trained on the fox --- who was now beginning to trot across the hay field again.

I figured he was about out of range, especially in the questionable lighting conditions, but it was still worth teaching him a lesson. I drew the 12 gauge to my shoulder, pointed in his direction, and squeezed the trigger. The ROAR it made was very satisfying, and I loved the way the blast echoed off the stands of trees and bushes ringing our field. A moment later, I heard something (presumably the fox) crashing through that brush at high speed.

I made my way back to the barn, and discovered a trail of feathers where the goose had made her stand and fought off the attacker. I managed to get both geese in to the barn and the door re-secured, and put the shotgun away. At the very worst, I (and the goose) hopefully gave the fox a scare he won't forget. At best, I hopefully managed to pepper his tail. Either way, I doubt he'll be coming back again any time soon.

Dueling Geese

Back in Illinois, we called ourselves "Rolling Goose Farm." It was basically an elaborate pun; we figured we were the only family in Ford County with two old Volvo 240s. The word "Volvo," in Swedish, means "rolling." And we raised geese. Put it all together, and you get "Rolling Goose." Here is the logo we had a friend design; we used it on our farm sign and on egg carton labels, etc. It basically shows one of our geese commandeering our 1978 Volvo 244 (after having chopped the top).


And yes, one customer actually asked us, "Did that ever really happen?"

Anyway, because "goose" is in the name of our farm, and we're listed on a number of internet farm directories, we seem to turn up on everybody's search...and as a result, we get quite a few inquiries about geese for sale. And we have to turn most of them away, as we can't ship goose meat.

Usually, these inquiries end at Christmas time. But today, I got an amusing call from a gentleman in Arizona who was looking for goose. Actually, two geese. He has a friend from Europe (many of our goose customers are European immigrants) who really likes to cook goose. And my caller says he really likes to cook goose, too. That friend will be coming to Arizona soon to visit, and they're trying to organize a cook-off. They were trying to get two large fresh geese from one farm, go head-to-head cooking them, and then have a large gathering of friends and family judge the winner.

"Sounds like Dueling Banjos!" I laughed. If I had more musical talent, I might have attempted to do the song's opening riff, but with "Honk-a-honk-honk-honk." Instead, I added, "Wish I could be there to sample that."

"I wish you could, too!" he chuckled.

And then I explained that we can't ship our meat...and that he'd have a tough time finding anyone --- even local --- that has fresh geese at this time of year. Goslings have a very limited hatching period (basically February-June...our birds just started laying this week), and cannot be raised off-season. To be any good for eating, geese must be butchered in their first year of life, and nearly every gosling ends up getting butchered for Christmas. Any goose left from last year's hatch would be likely be intended as a breeder, as they'd be borderline too tough for eating now.

He appreciated talking with me about how geese are raised, and I enjoyed hearing about what he'd like to do. He'll probably end up getting a couple of six pound frozen geese at Whole Foods...but I still wish I could be there to sample the results.