170 



THE GAME BREEDER 



Wild Canada Gander Leading a Flock oCWhiteSFronted Geese on H. J. Jager's Plant. 



ens. Fresh water and sand should 

 always be before them. As they soon 

 fill the water dish with dirt, it should be 

 easily cleaned, and a partly covered dish, 

 in which they cannot wash, is preferable. 

 The goslings that run with their parents 

 seldom get any feed until they can eat 

 whole grains. As grass is their natural 

 food one system is as good as the other 

 for growing geese, but the ones raised 

 by hand are easier to handle because of 

 their tameness. They will follow you 

 like a dog, but if you give them a chance, 

 while young, they will also follow 

 strangers and be lost. 



I have never attempted to feed for egg 

 production. The geese eat with the 

 chickens whatever I happen to feed them. 

 If they start laying while the weather is 

 yet cold, as they often do, I remove the 

 eggs from the nest but substitute old 

 spoiled ones until the goose is ready to 

 set. Then I take away all the eggs, 

 cover up the nest, and turn the pair loose 

 for about a week, when I again uncover 

 her nest and in a few days she will again 

 begin laying her second setting. This 

 plan does not work unless she starts 

 laying very early. Last year one goose 

 layed two settings of seven eggs each. 

 A friend of mine tried removing the 

 eggs as fast as layed, leaving only a nest 

 egg. His two geese layed thirteen and 

 fifteen eggs and quit without becoming 

 broody. From five to eight eggs makes 

 a setting, six being the most common. 



I have not yet succeeded in breeding 

 the Hutchins and Cackling geese, but 

 still hope to do so. It took me eight 

 years to induce a pair of my wing-tipped 



snow geese to breed, but for the past 

 three years they have nested and hatched 

 six young each year. This year a heavy 

 snowstorm covered their first egg with 

 four inches of snow for two days and 

 nights and it froze quite hard besides, 

 but the egg hatched just the same as 

 those laid after the snow and frost dis- 

 appeared. They make their nest in the 

 middle of the pasture, pulling dead grass 

 into a little depression in the ground, and 

 when ready to set the goose lines it with 

 her down. I am convinced that they 

 hatch several days short of four weeks, 

 but cannot give the exact time of incu- 

 bation. 



Mr. Lee S. Crandall, of the New York 

 Zoological Society, in his report on the 



Snow Geese and Young Referred to. 



breeding of game birds in captivity, 

 credits me with having the only pair of 

 captivity-breeding lesser snow geese and 

 says : "The reluctance of snow geese to 

 breed in this country and the readiness 

 with which they breed in Europe can 

 probably be accounted for by the estab- 

 lishment of captivity bred strains by 

 European breeders. It is to be hoped, 

 now that Mr. Jager's birds are breeding, 



