MANAGEMENT OF GEESE 169 



together. On the other hand, a flock once harmoniously mated 

 does not have to be renewed every year or two. As long as the 

 old birds are vigorous the entire product of young may be sold 

 each season without reducing the producing capacity of the flock. 

 The average gander is past his prime after he is six or seven 

 years old, but geese are often good breeders until ten or twelve 

 years old. Occasionally a goose lives to a great age. There are 

 reliable accounts of geese breeding well when over twenty years 

 old. Some stories of geese living to more than eighty years of 

 age have been widely circulated, but little credence is to be given 

 such tales ; people who originate them and suppose that they are 

 true do not know how difficult it would be to make sure of the 

 identity of a goose through so long a period. 



Houses and yards. Geese, like ducks, prefer to live in the 

 open air, and do not often voluntarily take shelter from any 

 element but heat. It is customary to provide a small shelter 

 which thay may use if they wish. In most cases it is not neces- 

 sary for a farmer to make a yard especially for geese. The 

 permanent fences or walls between the divisions of the farm will 

 usually keep geese in the pasture allotted to them. The best 

 place for geese is a marshy meadow in which some parts of the 

 surface are elevated enough to be quite dry at all seasons. These 

 places afford more comfortable resting places when the birds 

 tire of the wet land. They also furnish different kinds of grass 

 from those growing on very wet land. On many farms there 

 are tracts of land much more suitable for geese than for any 

 other live stock. Cattle and hogs sometimes cut up such land 

 very badly, destroying the vegetation on it and making it un- 

 sightly. Such a piece of land is sometimes a part of a pasture 

 used for cattle. In that case it may be a good plan to fence the 

 cattle from the soft ground with a wire or rail fence, which keeps 

 them out of the part reserved for the geese, yet allows the 

 geese the range of the whole pasture. A small number of geese 

 in a large pasture will not hurt the pasture for cattle or horses. 



