Poultry : a practical guide to the choice, breeding, rearing, and management of all descriptions of fowls, turkeys, guinea-fowls, ducks and geese for profit and exhibition / by Hugh Piper.

  • Piper, Hugh.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Poultry : a practical guide to the choice, breeding, rearing, and management of all descriptions of fowls, turkeys, guinea-fowls, ducks and geese for profit and exhibition / by Hugh Piper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    over which the gulls or goslings are dragged by the goose, until they become cramped or tired, some of them squatting down and remaining behind at evening.” All the hemlock or deadly nightshade within range should be destroyed. When the corn is garnered the young geese may be turned into the stubble which they will thoroughly glean, and many of them will be in tine condition by Michaelmas. Green geese are young geese fattened at about the age of four months, usually on oatmeal and peas, mixed with skim-milk or butter-milk, or upon oats or other grain, and are very delicate. In fattening geese for Christmas give oats mixed with water for the first fortnight, and after- wards barleymeal made into a crumbling porridge. They should be allowed to bathe for a few hours before being killed, for they are then plucked more easily and the feathers are in better condition. Their feathers, down, and quills are very valuable. Geese are very destructive to all garden and farm crops, as well as young trees, and must therefore be carefully kept out of orchards and plantations. Their dung, though acrid and apt to injure at first, will, when it is mellowed, much enrich the ground. The Toulouse or Grey Goose is very large, of uniform grey plumage, with long neck, having a kind of dewlap under the throat; the abdominal pouch very much deve- loped, almost touching the ground ; short legs ; flat feet; short, broad tail; and very upright carriage, almost like a penguin. The Toulouse lays a large number of eggs, some- times as many as thirty, and even more, but rarely wishes to sit, and is a very bad mother. The Emden or pure White is very scarce. The bill is flesh-colour, and the legs and feet orange. They require a pond. The Toulouse, crossed with the large white or dark- coloured common breed, produces greater weight than either, and the objection to the former as indifferent sitters and mothers is avoided ; but is not desirable for breeding stock, and must have a pond like the White.