Who Uses Weeder Geese?

[babalubird]

Have you been successful using them to weed your garden/crops? Or did you still wind up breaking your back weeding or having to invest in expensive machinery?

Did you use Chinese Whites, Africans or other?

How did you get rid of them after you were through? If it isn't Christmas season and there's no market for the meat, is there a reliable market for live breeder animals?

Thanks.

Connie

 

[conny63malies]

Are you sure you are talking about ducks? Or do you mean geese?
Because the breeds you menionnare all geese. However i have very unsuccsessfully used meeder ducks. My musovies ate all my tomatoes and peppers. THey mostly left the pumpkins and eggplants alone.

 

[babalubird]

Oh, sorry, I meant geese, darn! Sorry for the confusion.

Well, I understand that these geese will eat anything grass-like or thin-leafed but for some reason will leave most but not all broad-leafed veggies along, the foliage that is. And then you have to remove them before anything sets fruit.

We need them to weed a whole acre of winter peas. We only had discs to try to break up the coastal pasture. I suspect the coastal will come back with a vengence and I'm not up to hand weeding an acre, I don't think.

Will the geese leave Winter pea foliage alone? I don't care about the pea pods. We're just growing it to add nitrogen to the soil for a real garden come spring.

Thanks.

Connie

 

[Wildsky]

If you click edit on your first post, you can edit the subject line and change it to geese.

 

[silkiechicken]

I don't know about geese, but I do know that pea leaves are a chicken delicacy...darn birds wiped out all the tops of half my rows before they saw me coming and high tailed it out of the garden though a hole in the fence. They know that they aren't supposed to be in there and run when they see me coming! If the peas used in the field are soft leaved, geese will probably gobble them up.

 

[Wildsky]

Quote:
SMART BIRDS....

My fools got into my garden last year, then couldn't find the hole they came through to get out

 

[babalubird]

Thank you, Sky. Corrected.

 

[Omniskies]

We've used weeder geese. For this year's batch of goslings we're going to try and perfect them.

Geese do a fantastic job weeding the garden, but you can only let them weed certain sections at certain times. For example, they're great at weeding strawberries, but absolutely love the fruit.

As for a market, we never, ever get stuck with geese. If nothing else, geese are extremely tasty and easy enough to put in the freezer if you skin them. When fall rolls around either fill your freezer or start selling.

We have also gotten into live harvesting down with quite a bit of success (once the weather warms up we're going to make a goose down quilt with pictures of our geese stitched onto each patch

.

A big trick to making weeder geese is to give them a taste of the weeds you want gone from the very beginning. When they're still in the brooder pick the weeds and let them chomp on them. It's free food, making geese cheaper to raise than virtually any other barnyard bird, and when they grow up they'll seek out those weeds to eat.

 

[babalubird]

Oh, would I like to pick your brain, Omniskies!

OK, the breed I'm looking at is the White or Brown Chinese Geese, the reason being I read that they weed better with less damage because of their lighter weight and more agile long neck.

Because of their smaller size, do they still make good meat geese and are people willing to pay for a goose that small?

If raised with livestock guardian dogs, will they accept them as part of the "flock" or is the "aggressive gene" too ingrained in them to accept anything canine even if the canine is there to protect them?

Thanks.

Connie

 

[babalubird]

Omniskie, one more question.

Right now we need the geese to clean coastal grass, rye, etc. out of a cover crop of winter peas we've planted to put nitrogen into the soil. I don't even care if the geese eat the pea pods, but will they eat the foliage of peas? Any experience with geese and peas? Thanks.

Connie