Rent-A-Geese

[Puddle Foot Farm]

I like the little "no weeds allowed" sign! Was that placed there for encouragement for the slave geese?

They are cuties and I'm sure they enjoyed their work..

 

[DuckLady]

Quote:
Depends on the crop. I learned the hard way to let the corn get a few feet high before they leave them alone.

And never let them around lettuces, squash and tomatoes.

 

[DuckLady]

They had a grand time.

And if their "output" was any indication, they ate a LOT.

 

[duckyfromoz]

I used to take my goose to a friends place. She only had such a small patch of grass in the back yard- that owning a lawn mower was pointless. In only took two days for the lawn to be nicely trimmed and fertilized each time. Dont know what the neighbours might have though about the honking goose sleeping overnight every so often...

 

[RAREROO]

Quote:
Depends on the crop. I learned the hard way to let the corn get a few feet high before they leave them alone.

And never let them around lettuces, squash and tomatoes.

Haha, thanks, thats what I figured. I plant a little patch of tomatoes and peppers everyyear and I when I kept my ducks penned up, I would take them and put them in the fenced in garden and watch them and they would do some weeding for me, but now they free range and get plenty of green stuff and could care less about my weeds so I've just been pulling them and feeding them to the chickens this year, but I was just wondering if geese really were the "weeders" like I have heard and not just "mowers" of everything that is growing.

 

[Cottage Rose]

My geese basically do not eat weeds.

They may nibble on them a bit but they will eat short, snubbed off grass before they go for anything.

 

[chickensducks&agoose]

mine like snow peas

and like to uproot everything else... like they bite it, pull it, decide they don't like it, and leave it laying there.

 

[goosedragon]

Quote:
Depends on the crop. I learned the hard way to let the corn get a few feet high before they leave them alone.

And never let them around lettuces, squash and tomatoes.

Haha, thanks, thats what I figured. I plant a little patch of tomatoes and peppers everyyear and I when I kept my ducks penned up, I would take them and put them in the fenced in garden and watch them and they would do some weeding for me, but now they free range and get plenty of green stuff and could care less about my weeds so I've just been pulling them and feeding them to the chickens this year, but I was just wondering if geese really were the "weeders" like I have heard and not just "mowers" of everything that is growing.

Usually in planted field crops the crop gets a jump on the weeds, and weeder geese are not turned loose until the stage where the crop plants are well established and the weeds are just starting. Now few geese know crops from weeds but they do know that small plants are likely to be tender and they perfer tender to tough or woody. If you leave them in the same spot too long they will finish all the tender good stuff and start eating the crop. There are some weeds that they don't like and will skip them (wild onion or garlic come to mind) and there are some crops that they just love to eat. In the old days mostly half grown goslings were used and retired to the dinner table or the market when no longer needed for weeders.
I used to turn mine loose on my rose bushes before they flowered and at the end of a bloom cycle when they would deadhead or remove the blooms that were past it. I would lose a few leaves when they were in there, but it was better than trying to weed around the thorns. There favorite food was bunch grass a day or two after I had mowed off the tough leaves. Oh they also quite enjoyed a 6 foot banana tree plant that I didn't think they would touch because of the size, ate the whole thing, trunk and all.