176 OUR DOMESTIC BIRDS 



a greater profit by fattening them before they were killed. Some 

 of those who engaged in fattening geese were very successful 

 and made large profits. As they extended operations in this 

 line they required a great deal of land. Sometimes as many 

 as 15,000 geese are fattened on one farm in a season. The 

 fatteners buy in the early part of the summer from the farmers 

 who sell the green geese as soon as they are grown. As these 

 make the finest geese for the table, and as the best demand for 

 geese comes at the holiday season in the winter, a large part of 

 them are put in storage after being killed. After the green geese 

 are disposed of, the fatteners buy live geese shipped in from 

 distant points, and have them ready to kill about the time when 

 the demand for goose is good. 



While they are very profitable when everything goes well, fat- 

 tening geese is a business attended by heavy risks. In buying 

 from many different sources a fattener may get some geese having 

 a contagious disease, and the infection may spread through his 

 whole flock before he discovers it, for some diseases have no 

 pronounced symptoms in their early stages. Keeping such large 

 numbers of geese on the same land year after year also brings 

 trouble through the pollution of the soil. 



GROWING THOROUGHBRED GEESE FOR EXHIBITION 



The proportion of thoroughbred geese among those grown 

 for market is very small. Most of the geese on farms are grades 

 produced by crossing thoroughbred or high-grade males on the old 

 unimproved stock. This gives a type of goose which is much 

 better than the old common goose but not nearly as large as 

 the heavy Emden and Toulouse Geese. The intermediate size 

 is, however, large enough to meet the general market demand. 

 The production of thoroughbred geese is carried on to supply 

 stock of medium quality for the farmers who want to maintain 

 a good grade of stock, and to supply exhibition birds of the 



