POULTRY FEEDS AND FEEDING 



made up of 2 parts shorts and i part of corn meal or 

 ground oats or ground barley. After they are 6 weeks 

 old, if they still need extra feed, change the mash to equal 

 parts shorts, corn meal, and ground oats, with 5 per cent 

 meat scrap. Where the pasture is good, many goslings 

 are raised from the time they are 2 or 3 weeks old to fat- 

 tening time without any grain feed, but the addition of a 

 small amount of the mash given above is an advantage at 

 all times. Whole grains are not usually fed until the 

 goslings are well feathered. 



PREPARING FOR MARKET 



In a few sections, young geese, when fully feathered 

 or when the long flight wing feathers reach the tail, are 

 fattened in large numbers by buyers who make a specialty 

 of this business. Different methods are used success- 

 fully in the special fattening of geese on a large scale. A 

 goose-fattening farm in Illinois buys large numbers of 

 geese and fattens them for one month in an orchard or 

 cornfield of flocks of 1,000 or more. No shelter is pro- 

 vided other than that of trees or standing cornstalks, ex- 

 cept in unusually severe weather, when the geese are 

 driven into sheds. 



Corn on the cob and plenty of water are kept before 

 the geese all the time and they eat the leaves off the corn- 

 stalks for roughage. These geese are then shipped alive 

 in a poultry car to the New York market. Some farmers 

 fatten their own geese. The geese may be "pen fattened" 

 in flocks of from 20 to 25 and fed three times daily, giv- 



200 



