246 



THE AMERICAN POULTERER'S COMPANION. 



to kill it, lest it should be choaked with fat 

 and die. 



In some places on the Continent they nail 

 their feet to a board, burn out their eyes with a 

 hot iron, and keep them before a fire, allowing 

 them, however, as much water as they choose 

 to drink ; but these barbarous practices are now 

 seldom resorted to. 



M. Viele, of France, found, by experiment, 

 that geese fattened without cramming can not 

 be brought to weigh above 12 or 13 pounds, 

 while by cramming they can be made to weigh 

 at least a third more. 



It is stated in the Farmer's Gazette that geese 

 can be raised, in a proper situation, at a profit 

 far greater than almost any other stock. But 

 to do this, more attention is required than is 

 usually bestowed on their keeping arid manage- 

 ment. 



The profit to be derived from geese feathers 

 is not any where to be neglected ; it is an im- 

 portant article, and always commands a fair 

 price. An acquaintance of the author, who is 

 very particular in keeping the feathers clean, 

 finds a ready market at from 50 to 60 cents per 

 pound. A goose will yield from 15 to 17 

 ounces in a season. Bremen or Embden geese 

 are larger than the common geese, are always 

 white, and yield on an average from one to 

 three ounces more feathers, and of a better 

 quality (having more down attached to them) 

 than those of the common brown goose. 



A writer in the Maine Farmer says : "I once 

 knew a couple of industrious sisters who lived 

 near a never-failing brook or stream in Massa- 

 chusetts, who kept generally through the winter 

 thirty geese, male and female. They had erect- 

 ed some suitable but not costly sheds, in which 

 they had apartments for them to lay, sit, and 

 hatch. Their food in the winter was meal of 

 various kinds to some extent, but principally 

 apples and roots. In summer they had a pas- 

 ture inclosed with a stone wall or broad fence, 

 which embraced the water. They kept their 

 wings so clipped that they could not fly over 

 such a fence. They well knew, what we all 

 know, that live geese feathers are a cash article 

 at a fair price. They picked off their feathers 

 three times in the season. Those thirty geese 



wintered, would raise seventy-five goslings, or 

 young geese, and of course they had that num- 

 ber to dispose of every fall or beginning of win- 

 ter, when they are sent to market, and again 

 picked, making four times they obtained feath- 

 ers from those they wintered, and twice from 

 the young ones that they had killed." 



Of all the stock brought up on farms, the 

 goose lives to the greatest age, and is noted 

 for its longevity ; there are records of some at- 

 taining to a century or more. Twenty and 

 thirty years are common periods through which 

 its life may be traced ; but more than twice 

 the latter space has been well proved to have 

 passed over its head, without the least dim- 

 inution of its value for the purpose of breed- 

 ing. 



In 1824 there was a goose living in the pos- 

 session of a Mr. Hewison (England), which was 

 then upward of one hundred years old. It had 

 been always in the constant possession of Mr. 

 H.'s forefathers and himself; and on quitting 

 his farm he would not suffer it to be sold with 

 the rest of the stock, but made a present of it 

 to the incoming tenant, that the venerable fowl 

 might terminate its career on the spot where its 

 useful and long life had been thus far spent. 



There was also a goose on a farm in Scotland 

 of the clearly ascertained age of eighty-one 

 years, still healthy and vigorous ; she was kill- 

 ed while sitting on her -eggs by a sow. It was 

 supposed she might still have lived many years, 

 and her fecundity appeared to be permanent. 

 Other geese have proved fertile at seventy 

 years. 



" A farmer near this place," says Mr. Sayers, 

 writing from Clanville House, near Andover, 

 England, "tells me that he lias a goose now 

 twenty-three years old, and that she has never 

 hitherto failed in hatching out two good broods 

 every year ; her second hatch this very season 

 (1853) was ten, of which all are alive." 



The following goose story was related by Rev. 

 C. Atwater in an English publication : 



"At the farm mills of Taberakeena, near 

 Clonmel, Ireland, while in the possession of the 

 late Mrs. Newbold, there was a goose, which by 

 some accident was left solitary without a male 

 or offspring, gander or gosling. 



