Who has ate a goose? Good eats?

[greyfields]

Unless you have a sex linked breed, like Pilgrims, it takes some experience. The two sexes often sound just a bit different. The upside is that as far as vent sexing goes, geese are the easiest to do. Just practice! Or raise Pilgrims. :0

Regarding goose meat, we sold 18 birds last year as Christmas geese. People are getting re-interested in their traditions and heritage. And then once you've had goose neck confit, you will crave it for an eternity. Geese are far more ecological to raise than turkeys, too. Finally, the thing to be careful is with farm raised meats, they are not 'marinated' in salt water. I reccomend anyone here growing their own chicken or waterfowl to try and find cookbooks from pre 1950's and start with those cooking times.

 

[ksacres]

I actually am interested in Pilgrims, but they seem to be few and far between. I think the auto-sexing genetics are amazing. I'm on a waiting list for eggs from a breeder, but was thinking if I could tell the difference between males and females a more common (and therefore less expensive) breed would be nice. I had an African that I really liked, but I only knew it was a "he" because and experienced goose breeder told me he was

 

[greyfields]

The nobs will be larger on the males for those breeds with them. You won't really be able to tell that, though, until they've grown to about a year old. Pilgrims I find to be real bargrain birds, are you anywhere near Holderread?

http://www.holderreadfarm.com/

 

[ksacres]

$15 is still a lot for a day old goose! You can buy them from a hatchery for about half that. I guess that's what I was getting at

 

[SeaChick]

regarding cooking non-supermarket poultry.... I wanted to recommend a book I just got called "Grassfed Gourmet". It has tons of great info and recipes for cooking pastured livestock of all types (beef, pork, sheep, goat, poultry). It explains how to cook this stuff differently than you're used to cooking supermarket grain-fed factory-farmed animals. Great book!!

Stacey