How to Raise Geese with Dave Holderread

John Moore: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. We have a very special guest for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. Dave Holderread, author of Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks and The Book of Geese, has a decades long successful career in raising waterfowl, and we’re so excited he joined us to talk about incubating and raising geese.

This is Mother Earth News.

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John Moore: We’d like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Brinsea, chick incubation specialists, focusing on egg incubator design continuously since 1976, resulting in egg incubators, chick brooders, and incubation accessories. They offer [00:01:00] unparalleled practicality, reliability, superior hatch rates, and healthy chicks. Innovation you can trust.

[00:01:09] Introducing Dave Holderread

Kenny Coogan: Good day everyone, and we appreciate you for joining us on another exciting Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. I am Kenny Coogan, and joining me today is Dave Holderread, author and domestic waterfowl expert. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we have been dedicated to conserving our planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources.

Today, we are going to learn about raising geese. Dave Holderread, author of Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks, has raised and studied domestic geese and ducks continuously since 1961. He and his wife, Millie, have established one of the largest genetic stocks of domestic waterfowl in the world on their farm in Oregon. And their birds have won [00:02:00] numerous championships at regional and national shows. Holderread has taught vocational poultry programs throughout North America. Welcome to the podcast, Dave.

Dave Holderread: Hello and welcome from Oregon.

Kenny Coogan: We are so excited to have you. And rare domestic animals, including heritage breeds, represent a irreplaceable piece of earth’s biodiversity and offer incredible variety that we may need in our future farm. So Dave, can you tell us why did you choose geese and ducks to be your life’s work?

Dave Holderread: Well, my parents often told the story that from the time I was a toddler, that whenever they would go to a park, take the family to a park, or where there was a pond or a stream, that I would immediately head to it and would just stand and watch the ducks and geese.

[00:03:00] And my, my earliest memories is I was just fascinated by these fellow earth travelers that could be walking around on land and then just walk in the water and float and swim away. And then with enthusiasm, they would often dive under the water. And I remember seeing geese dive and stay under water for 50 feet or more, and you could follow their path by the bubbles that would be coming up. Then they would resurface, and then some of these same geese would take off flying and they’d be flying around, and then they’d come in for a landing and they’d put down their large web feet as air brakes, and then they would ski across the water. And I, I thought that was just the best of all worlds.

So for some reason I just was fascinated with them.

Kenny Coogan: I could see why. Now at your pinnacle, do you have an estimate [00:04:00] of the most breeds of ducks and geese you had at one time?

Dave Holderread: It was in, you know, and it kind of depends how you divide ’em up. But if you go by varieties, so some breeds have more than one variety. We were over 80 at our peak. Within each of those varieties, we tended to keep multiple family lines. It wasn’t just like we had one pen of each variety.

Kenny Coogan: Yeah. You had a lot. I was curious about over the decades, how did you acquire all of these different breeds and varieties? Was it just in Canada and the U.S.? Did you import? Yeah. It was just so fascinating to figure out how you procured everything.

Dave Holderread: Right. I mean, most of our breeding stock came from breeders and sources in Canada and the U.S. We did import some from Europe, that that is a [00:05:00] difficult process. There were people in Canada that it was much easier to import birds from Europe into Canada, especially if they came through Great Britain. Great Britain and Canada had easier alliances for exchanging breeding stock. Anything that was imported in general came through Canada, and once they’d gone through quarantine there, then they could, they were eligible if they passed all their tests to come into the U.S., just as if they were coming from Canada.

You know, initially started raising these when I was seven or eight years old. I actually got my personal first ducks from my third grade teacher, who brought two duckings to class after Easter vacation. And we raised them in the classroom, and then she told us that the person that wrote the best story about the ducks would get ’em. And I ended up with him, and [00:06:00] I don’t believe for a minute I wrote the best paper. I think she was just watching and seeing who was the most fascinated by ’em.

So I was just fascinated with these birds and kept adding more breeds. And then a hatchery that was about 50 miles from us learned about my interest and said they needed hatching eggs. And so asked if I’d produce hatching eggs for ’em, and then I said yes. And so they requested a few other breeds than what I had, and so I would, would get those. And early on my, we, we lived only five miles from the poultry science department at Oregon State University. And my dad introduced me to the, and at that point, the university had a separate poultry department. It was a freestanding department, had three research farms, a hatchery, a feed mill. It was quite extensive.

And my dad introduced me to the profs [00:07:00] from that department, and they kind of, I kind of became their pet. So they helped me with genetic questions, feed questions, and healthcare questions. And then being able to sell the hatching eggs to this hatchery. It just kind of took off from there.

And then when I was a freshman in college, I got a phone call from Puerto Rico asking if I’d be consider coming down and starting a Title One poultry training program. And they said I needed two years of college to get certified in Puerto Rico to teach. I was in Kansas. At that point, I thought I wanted to be a wildlife biologist and a airplane pilot, so I was in a, a school that had a good aviation program.

Anyway, after that phone call, I decided I would go to Puerto Rico. So I came back to Oregon State, took all the poultry science courses I could cram into my sophomore year and other animal science [00:08:00] courses, and then went to Puerto Rico. It was there that I decided after looking around that a lot of Puerto Ricans, they loved flowers, plants, and birds. A lot of ’em liked to raise their own poultry, but there were so many disease and parasite issues, it was really hard for ’em to raise small flocks. I decided to set the program up to look for species and breeds and varieties that would do well in that subtropical climate. So we started importing birds, and by the end, we had over a hundred varieties of chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, doves, quail, pheasants, peacocks, turkeys, Guinea foul, anything that I thought might do well there.

And, and the ducks and the geese just shown their ability to, with low, relatively low inputs, to survive in that environment. And I was [00:09:00] just enthralled that, you know, I, I was curious of why in poultry science departments around the U.S., there wasn’t more emphasis on ducks and geese.

And then at the same time as we were importing birds, and I had shown a lot as a boy at home. By 1972 when I was in Puerto Rico, a lot of the, some of the breeds that had been readily available in the sixties were becoming really difficult to find. So I became really concerned. A lot of these breeds that did so well in Puerto Rico were being lost. And so we returned to the States after four years on the island. And actually I met my wife there and got married while I was there. We returned and we decided we were gonna start working on preserving some rare breeds.

And we started off with just a couple breeds. Khaki Campbell Ducks were our main emphasis and Pilgrim geese. And then it just took [00:10:00] off from there.

Kenny Coogan: When you were in your twenties or maybe thirties, did you ever reconnect with your third grade teacher and told them what happened?

Dave Holderread: You know, I didn’t. And I, I tried a couple times but couldn’t track her. And so that, that was disappointment.

Kenny Coogan: It’s amazing what a teacher influence a young person.

Dave Holderread: Yeah. And, you know, and on top of that, my parents, who had no natural interest in birds above, you know, kind of average, they saw how passionate I was. And I like to tell parents, I have parents come to me and they’re just totally puzzled. They say, I can’t figure out, my kid is so interested in ducks or geese or whatever. And, you know, should I let ’em pursue it? And I’m like, I’m adamant. Yes. It’s, it’s not illegal, it’s not dangerous. And it’s gonna save them a lot of grief [00:11:00] if you let ’em just delve into this passion. And my parents were just stellar in helping me in this passion. You need other people helping you out to pursue your passions.

[00:11:14] How To Raise Geese on Your Property

Kenny Coogan: Yeah. So that’s a good segue. For listeners who wanna get into geese, what type of environments and property do you need to raise them? And are people in cities allowed to raise geese?

Dave Holderread: There’s a lot of variability in terms of cities that do. There are some that do and some that don’t. There’s not a hard, fast answer in terms of the environment you need. Geese are, are very adaptable. They’re extremely good in wet and colder climates. I have people call and say, oh, you know, should I be putting my geese in a heated building in the winter? And I just chuckle. And I said, you know, if you wanna have the warmest jacket in the world, what kind of jacket [00:12:00] is it? I mean, one of the best options is a down-filled. And so these birds have their own down-filled clothing that they wear all the time, so that they’re very cold-hardy. They love wet climates, and they do surprisingly well in dry climate. The main thing is they need some shade and they need drinking water. They do not have to have bathing water. They love bathing water. It helps keep ’em cleaner, but especially if they’ve got a water container, they can at least dip their head in and wash their bill and face. That is actually adequate. I’m not saying it’s ideal, but it’s certainly adequate.

So at one point, I’d say this was probably in the 1980s, we got a phone call from a woman. She said, we just moved your, to your locality from Berkeley, California. My husband is a geneticist. He was hired to run the genetics lab at the university. And I said, the only reason [00:13:00] I’d moved to Oregon was if I could buy, have a pair of geese. And so I’m calling you and I want a pair of geese and I want a pair of brown Chinese. And I said, well, so where do you live? And she said, oh, we live, and she told me the, the development that they lived in in Corvallis. And I said, oh well, you definitely don’t want brown Chinese. You don’t want Chinese of any variety. So they are the talked-ist, noisiest goose there is. And she insisted, and I kept trying to talk her out of it. They did buy a pair of geese from us and they lived right in town, had a small backyard. And I said, you know, I told myself, this is not gonna last long.

We ended up getting to know these people a year after she got the geese. We were at their place for a holiday meal. A neighbor happened to come over. It was their adjacent neighbor behind them. They shared a fence, and it was a [00:14:00] solid wooden fence. And the neighbor came around the backyard where we were and got a startled look on her face and said, when did you get those geese? And, and our friend said, well, I’ve had ’em for a year now. Those geese had never uttered the sound. Their neighbors had no idea they had them. Now, if you had asked me if that was possible, I would’ve told you it was absolutely impossible. Chinese geese just talk all the time, it seems like.

I started learning early on you, you very seldom say anything for sure about, actually about any animal, probably. They’ll make lies out of you. Another time we sold a pair of geese to a woman back in the Midwest. And Pilgrims, ’cause we considered Pilgrims to be about the no, the quietest of all the geese. And about a month after she got ’em, she called and said, those are the noisiest geese I have ever had. And I was like, well, that’s interesting. They certainly weren’t here. Well, as we talked, end up about a mile away, they had [00:15:00] neighbors that had Chinese geese. What was happening was those geese were talking back and forth to each other.

You know, the main thing I tell people is if you’re interested in raising geese, give it a try. You know, you may have to adapt. And geese are, in my experience, having raised all of the species of domestic birds that are normally, or not even normally, but occasionally raised in North America, they’re the most intelligent. They take a little more skill from the standpoint, you’ve gotta be observant and you’ve got to have some understanding, or you can kind of get in some tight spots with ’em. And, and they’re big birds. They’re strong birds. It’s kind of more of an advanced species compared to chickens or ducks. And it’s one of the reasons I’m so fascinated by ’em, ’cause they, they are more complex. Basically, any behavior you see in humans, you’ll see in geese, including jealousy and temper [00:16:00] tantrums and anything else.

[00:16:02] Are Geese Mean?

Kenny Coogan: So Dave, we asked our Mother Earth News and Backyard Poultry Magazine followers if they had any questions for you. And Sarge Whitinski asks, “why are geese so mean?”

Dave Holderread: So geese are not mean, and they are mean. Geese can be mean. And the exact same bird in one environment around certain people will be the sweetest animal on earth, and in another environment will be a holy terror. So that’s one of the reasons I said geese are complex and you need a little more understanding.

At our peak, we had geese covering, it was a quarter mile long from the front to the back of our property. And we had pens of geese all the way from front to back. And there were, at our peak, we had five people doing chores, gathering eggs, feeding the birds, doing, you know, all the different chores that are needed. I [00:17:00] don’t think over the course of 12 months with all those birds and all those pens all together, all of us didn’t spend an hour a year dealing with disciplinary issues. In fact, I’d, I’d be surprised if it was more than 10 minutes with all those different pens and groups of birds. But if you do not have skill at being around geese, they can make your life hellish.

The thing I tell people is geese are two legged feathered small horses. I love selling geese to horse people, because all you have in, in one minute, you can tell them what they need to know, and they know exactly what you’re talking about. Because you, you interact with geese exactly the way you interact with horses.

And one of the keys to this is there’s a saying among horse people: you never [00:18:00] accept behavior in a foal that you would not accept from a mature stallion. That’s exactly true with geese. And people get in trouble because the, the goslings are cute, they’re very friendly, they’re very interactive, and so they think it’s cute when these little geese come and they pull on their fingers, they pull on their clothes, they nibble on ’em. Well, when that bird’s an adult and weighs, you know, for a lot of breeds, 15 to 20 pounds is pretty typical of adult weight. And pound for pound, a goose is stronger than any mammal. And that’s not just an opinion, that is actual physics and anatomically correct. Because you gotta remember, their muscles have to be able to keep them up in the air. At least the breeds that are able to fly and that is, it just takes a lot of strength.

So their, their muscles are really strong, their jaws are strong. So if you’ve got a bird [00:19:00] that grew up thinking that it can just do whatever it wants to on you, when it goes through puberty, it considers you to be a lower being. It’s often not pretty. I tell people, you know, if you’ve never been around good horse people, you need to go spend some time and see the way they interact with horses. They’re not mean to horses. They’re not brutal to horses. They’re firm and they’re observing. There’s no reason you can’t get along with geese.

[00:19:30] Handling Domestic Geese

Now, having said that, geese that know the local people and get along with ’em, all bets are off if a stranger shows up, and that’s why geese are so effective at being guard geese. We had a customer that came from out of state a number of years ago. Can’t remember what state he came from, but it was a long trip. And he brought, he had another fellow with him as a copilot and just as a companion. His friend hadn’t basically said nothing until we were [00:20:00] loading up his geese and their, his vehicle. And the friend just kind of blurted out, I hate geese, and it kind of startled me. And I said, oh why is that? He said, well, I’m a detective. He said, and when I do stakeouts, I know how to deal with every animal except geese. He said, dogs are no problem, and geese are my nemesis. And I just kind of chuckled and said, well that’s, you know, that’s why they make such great guard animals. So that, that is something you, you need to keep in mind. Geese that can be perfectly good citizens around the people they know can be very aggressive to people they don’t know.

So we had a rule here, we did not let our babies nibble on us. We did not feed ’em out of our hand. Now, you can feed ’em outta your hand, but you know, when you, when you’re raising hundreds of ’em, you can’t take the time to you, you need to do what is easy. And the easiest way [00:21:00] was we just did not feed any of ’em by hand. And, and this is actually true with horses. People that feed their horses treats, and then they wonder why their horses are nippy. You know, with a horse, you lay the, if you wanna get ’em a treat, just put it in the bucket and set it on the ground and, and have the horse stay back until you back up.

It’s the same way with geese. The first time a goose hises at us, we make them back up, and we don’t hit ’em. We don’t, but we just in general, when they’re raised the way we raise ’em, all you have to do is shake your finger at ’em and walk at ’em and say, sternly, no, you do not hiss at me and you don’t act like you’re gonna bite me. And backing up is a very, very submissive action for both geese and horses. And so they just learn.

Our nephew and niece that grew up here on the farm and our little niece, she, she was very small and petite. We would see her backing geese up the towered over her. And she would [00:22:00] just very firmly shake her finger at ’em and say, no. And we taught her, you do not leave if that bird takes a step toward you. And pretty soon the geese are like, this is boring. And they’ll turn around and walk off.

The rule to remember is with geese: the last person that retreated loses. So if you, you know, back your goose up and then feel like you did a good job, and then you turn around and walk away, and the goose is coming behind you, the goose won in its mind. And so I tell people, if it takes you a half hour to leave that pen and not have that bird take a step towards you, you take that half hour. Now, I’ve never had it take more than about 30 seconds.

Geese that have already become real aggressive. I’ve had people have me come over and rehabilitate their geese. The main thing is you do not want to act like a predator. That will really get them going. I, I will also say on average, women get along much better with geese than [00:23:00] men. And that doesn’t mean that there are men that get along just fine with geese, including myself, but you can’t turn into a raging predator and expect to get along with geese. You know, men have a tendency to kick at ’em and hit at ’em and this and that, and that just gets the, the protective juices of the geese riled up.

What I have done with geese that are hardcore aggressive toward people. I’ll take newspaper and roll it up reasonably loose. Not real tight. I will get a trash can lid. And, and this is, I’ve never had to do this with our own birds. This is for people that have had birds that are, that are just hardcore aggressive and have learned how to bluff their people. And use the trash can lid, you know, the old metal type that had a handle. You could use a plastic one too. The metal ones have the advantage that when the goose hits it with their wing, it tends to make a lot of noise. And I would just stand, you know, I remember this one time, these people, they [00:24:00] said, we cannot get in through the gate into the pen where the birds are. So we were at a show and, and their place was not that far off the road we were taking to go home from an out-of-state show. So we stopped by, they got me a trashcan lid, a a newspaper, and I stood there. And every time the goose would peck at the lid or beat it with its wing, I just started tapping him on the top of his head with the newspaper. And I wasn’t whacking him, I was just tapping him. And then he, after a little bit, he’d shake his head and back up, and then I would take a step forward. And I mean, we went through this like 45 minutes. And I got to where I was tapping him pretty firm, but I wasn’t whacking him. And after about 45 minutes, he walked away and I walked through the pen, I walked out, I walked back in, and he came over one more time. And I, you know, it took just a minute or so, and then he is like, you know what, this guy has called my bluff, and I might as well just [00:25:00] give up.

[00:25:01] Getting Adult Geese vs. Goslings

Kenny Coogan: So we, we wanna encourage listeners who wanna get into geese. Do you think the easiest way is to start with adults or goslings? I mean, you, you kind of described both ways of how to train the babies and the adults. But it’s like hard to know what type of animal behavior or what kind of personality you’re getting, I guess, in the adult form.

Dave Holderread: In general, when you move adult geese, kind of regardless of what their temperament was at the old location, when you move ’em, they feel vulnerable, and they tend not to be as aggressive. And so we’ve never had an issue when we bought adult birds. And some of the rare stuff, the only way we could get was adults and we’d have ’em shipped in.

We always quarantine them. That was for health reasons, but we really never had any issue with them. If they showed any aggression, we would just do our little routine of [00:26:00] backing them up and saying, you know what, we’re not gonna hurt you, but you’ve gotta be respectful. You’ve gotta be firm about it, but not mean about it, and you’ve gotta be consistent.

So one of the things that geese will do, and this is exactly like horses. Horses more so than geese. But a horse will basically check out every day to make sure that they understand what the relationship is. And geese have a tendency to do that. And all, you know, all I do is I just look at ’em and, and say, everything’s the same as it is it was yesterday.

One of the things with working with animals, you need to be present. If your mind is off somewhere else and you’re not paying attention, you can be training these animals in ways that you have no idea you’re training them. I mean, goslings in general, I tell people I prefer that they start with goslings if they, you know, have the [00:27:00] wherewithal to raise them. But just be aware that you need to establish boundaries with them. The other thing that happens is you end up with goslings that are terrified of people. And that’s because people, again, are not being present. And they’ll walk into the room where they’re brooding them as babies, and they just suddenly open the door and it startles the babies. And you can get ’em to where they have a natural startle response every time you show up.

Say you’re brooding the young birds in a building. Knock on the door and call out before you open the door. Say, hey, I’m coming in. I’m bringing you food, I’m bringing you water, whatever. Just chat with ’em, and then open the door slowly. I’ve been to commercial places where the workers had huge flocks of birds, terrified, just ’cause they had no concept that you don’t just barge into where these animals are.

[00:27:57] Hatching or Incubating Goose Eggs

Kenny Coogan: So, let’s say we have listeners, they just got a [00:28:00] couple of pairs of geese, they’re ready to breed. Do you prefer the birds to hatch their own goslings? Or do you need the assistance of an incubator? Just behavior related.

Dave Holderread: Right. I’m gonna start a little bit different place. If you’re gonna have adults and they’re, I mean, they’re, they’re gonna, if they’re gonna lay eggs, think about where you put the nests for them. A nest, for most breeds of geese, should be at least two foot square, have a lot of straw or non moldy hay in it. Locate that nest away from the doorway or the path where you’re gonna be traveling, because geese will be protective of their nest.

The one exception that we allowed our geese to hiss at us and show some aggression was around their nest. And the reason is we’ve got a lot of predators here, and we want them to be protective of their nests. But you should encourage them by placing the nests away from [00:29:00] pathways and away from gates, places where people will be traveling so that you’re not harassing ’em every time you walk by and they feel like they have to be protective.

So whether or not to let them hatch, it varies quite a bit from bird to bird. And one of the things I’ll say is, I’ll interject here. People are always asking me what are the best breeds and which breeds have the best temperament. These birds are all individuals, and you can find all kind of temperaments within different breeds, among the different breeds.

I’ve had people tell me, oh, this breed. I love this breed ’cause they have the best temperament. And I’ll say, well how many of ’em have you had? And it’s usually like one, two, or three, or maybe a dozen at the most. And I always chuckle because I, over the years I’ve had people tell me, any given breed has the best breed, and any given breed has the worst temperament, has the best or worst temperament. It depends more on you and the individual bird. And there, there is variation from [00:30:00] bird to bird, but a lot of temperament issues have to do with the people.

So in nesting, you know, encourage ’em to nest away from where you’re gonna be spending a lot of time. Whether or not to let them hatch ’em or not, some females are good at that and some are not. In general, they get better with age. First and second year birds often are not very reliable setters. You know, they may try and then they get tired of it and give up. We’ve had birds that first three or four years were not good at it. And then, later on they got very good at it.

Goose eggs of the, of the domestic poultry and avian species are some of the hardest eggs to hatch in general in an incubator. Takes more detail. Most people have more difficulty with them than, than other species. But that doesn’t mean you can’t hatch ’em. We made a living hatching goose eggs. So, certainly possible, [00:31:00] but it does take more detail, a little more care and experimenting. You know, I tell people you, you know, if you buy an incubator and it, it gives instructions, that may not be exactly the instructions you’re gonna have to use in your environment. You know, if you’re at, at sea level versus 5,000 feet or any elevation, elevation makes a difference in how you incubate eggs. The natural humidity of your climate or that particular season makes a difference. Barometric pressure makes a difference. I mean, there’s all these things that play into that. You know, with diligence, a lot of people are quite successful at hatching eggs in incubators.

[00:31:42] How to Raise Geese: Breeding for Robust Goslings

Kenny Coogan: Now, speaking of which, you advertised for many years that you only sold robust day old birds. And I was wondering, did you selectively breed for robustness, or were you monitoring the hatching, [00:32:00] or were you breeding based on the parents?

Dave Holderread: All of the above would be the easiest answer. Genetics and breeding is complex science that nobody fully understands. But with time, you’ll, you’ll learn the adult breeding birds have to genetically be robust. You have to put together combinations that will produce robust babies from the standpoint. If you just keep breeding offspring from the same birds back to each other and they’re very inbred, most likely you’re gonna have weaker and weaker offspring.

And then diet is a huge factor in how robust the babies are. We always, with our geese, which is not practical for these large hatcheries, all of our breeding geese, and, and we, we ran quite a few, just pairs and trios. I mean, and we also had flock matings. But because we did a lot of pedigree breeding, we had to [00:33:00] know who the parents were. Even if it was just a pair of birds, we made sure that they had some pasture. They weren’t just in a dry, you know, dirt or bedded pen. They had access to grass. That made a huge difference. And they could move around, and a lot of ’em had swimming water. Not all of ’em, oddly enough. The rule of thumb is geese produce better fertility if they have swimming water.

But we had matings, including very large Dewlap Africans and Dewlap Toulouse, just monstrous birds that actually would not breed on water. And they did just fine in pens with just a bucket of water. But most of our geese had access to swimming water. You know, it does vary, but the, the diet of the breeding birds is huge. The, the incubation process is huge. Incubation environment has to be proper to produce a viable, [00:34:00] strong gosling.

And, and the other thing that we did that wasn’t real practical for a lot of big hatcheries. On the same hatch, we would generally ship three times. We would ship the first hatchlings and then the middle ones, and then the later ones. The size of the egg had a lot to do with when they hatched. So your, your eggs from younger geese would hatch earlier than from older geese, just because the size of the egg was different. In general with geese, the egg keeps increasing in size for three to five years. So the first year goose lays a comparatively small egg, which hatches up to two days sooner than from a fully mature goose.

I don’t consider geese fully mature until they’re two to three. So there’s all those factors. And you know, most of these big hatcheries, they, they wait until everything’s hatched and then they pull ’em out and they ship ’em the same day. We were able to [00:35:00] segregate and ship ’em. Our goal was to have ’em to the postal service 12 hours after they’d emerged from the egg.

[00:35:08] What Do Geese Eat?

Kenny Coogan: Did you change their diet from breeding season to everyday feeding?

Dave Holderread: Yes, we did. We were fortunate in, there was a feed mill that we worked with for nearly 60 years that would pelletize, make the feeds according to our own rations. And that is not feasible for most people. And so we had a breeder ration, we had a maintenance ration, we had a starter ration, we had a grower ration. And we tweaked them over the years. You know, you, you learn stuff.

But for, you know, the small grower or the small person that’s raising just a few geese, in general, name-brand brands of feed are adequate. You know, for the small local brands, there’s no way for me to know. I tell people even the best companies, there’s [00:36:00] people that are pulling the levers for mixing the, putting the ingredients in the feed, and accidents can happen. But in general, your bigger feed companies have good quality control. And if there is a problem, they will often take care of it.

It’s kind of a waste of time to use a good breeding ration for, for the non breeding season. For example, with the females, well, and males, you don’t want the calcium levels of a breeding ration when they’re not laying. It’s becoming more common for companies to have what they call “all purpose poultry feeds.” And a lot of times those feeds will be adequate for ducks, geese, chickens. What they say is, you know, start in a few weeks or, or as soon as the geese or birds start laying, you add oyster shells to give out the additional calcium that the females will need to produce the eggs. Those feeds have a tendency to be higher in [00:37:00] protein than they really need to be. And for that reason, I like to feed oats to geese. Even starting a basically a day old. In, in on average, a lot of our commercial feeds are too high in protein. These feed companies have figured out that if they say their feed is higher in protein, there’s a certain segment of the population that’ll buy that feed ’cause they think higher protein’s better.

You need the proper blend of proteins, but too much causes the birds to grow too fast. Now, if you’re just growing them to butcher at a young age, that may not be as much of an issue. Oats, in our experience, tends to put better feather on the birds, helps them grow stronger bones. It slows ’em down somewhat in their growth.

So starting at day old, we’ll use old fashioned rolled oats, raw, not cooked. You could feed ’em cooked, but that tends to get a little messy. We’ll [00:38:00] add about 10%, 15% by volume with the starter feed. By the time they’re eight weeks old, we will have it up to about 20% to 25%. And then, actually starting to maybe two or three weeks, you can start using whole oats. I like to soak the whole oats, and you can, even if you just soak ’em for 12 hours or so, they’ll plump right up. You start getting some enzyme activity going. On geese, like the big Dewlap Toulouse and Sebastopol with the elongated feather, well and all geese, you tend to see better feather on ’em if they’ve got some oats, whole oats in their diet.

A lot of feed companies don’t like putting oats in their rations because oats have so much fiber, it makes it harder to make crumbles and pellets out of it. So in general, these feed companies don’t put oats in for that reason.

The other thing we do when we’re adding oats like that for growing birds, you [00:39:00] know, up until about eight to 10 months or weeks of age, we’ll add some brewers or nutritional yeast. We buy it from our local food co-op. Teaspoon per about two pounds for the young birds. Works pretty well. And you can keep doing it up until they’re eight, 10 weeks old. Just mixing it in. And one of the advantage of having the soaked oats is we soak the oats and then we strain it and let ’em drain a little bit, and then we mix it in with their pellets. But we’ll put the oats in and then put the nutritional yeast right on the damp oats, and then mix it up, and the yeast tends to stick to the damp oats. You can also sprout oats and other grains, which is great for, for geese. I usually find that takes more time than I’m, I’ve got. So, I just tend to soak ’em.

Kenny Coogan: What’s the benefit of the yeast for the geese?

Dave Holderread: So, the oats are relatively low in protein. The [00:40:00] yeast will add a little bit of protein and just some of your B vitamins. The weak link on ducks and geese tends to be their legs. And so the, the yeast helps put better legs on ’em. And overall just it makes their feathers shinier. They, they’re, they’re more robust and healthier.

Kenny Coogan: We’re gonna take a quick break in our conversation to hear a word from our sponsor, and then when we return, we’re gonna learn the best goose breeds for eggs and meat.

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And now, back to our conversation with Dave Holderread.

[00:41:04] Raising Geese as Guard Animals for Chickens and Other Poultry

Kenny Coogan: We are back with Dave Holderread, domestic waterfall expert and author. So Dave, we have some questions from the listeners.

Heritage Springs asks, “how do I choose a goose to guard my chickens? Do they work with Guinea fowl as well?”

Dave Holderread: Local in our area, growers of pasture raised poultry have adapted, a lot of ’em, adapted the use of geese to protect their chickens. The reports we get, it’s very effective. I wouldn’t say a hundred percent effective, you know, year after year after year, ’cause you’ll occasionally get a rogue predator. The stories we hear is that it, it basically has eliminated the problems, especially of hawks taking their young chickens in the pasture raised situations. [00:42:00] And in general, I mean, it would depend how big an area your chickens are covering. But in general, two geese will provide the protection of hundreds, if not thousands of chickens.

The breed is not as important as one might think. I tend to encourage people to think about our larger breeds. So one of the, one of the things I often say is predators are always calculating the cost of the next meal, and that they carry a little cheater chart in their back pocket and are checking it and seeing. And when they see geese around, the cost goes up. Unless they’re really desperate or just reckless, they don’t wanna tangle with geese. Your bigger breeds of geese tend to visually give a better impression to predators, maybe raises the cost a little bit.

White [00:43:00] geese probably have a bit of an advantage. Having said that, we’ve had people use Toulouse, Africans, Pilgrims. Now pilgrims, you can have both. The males are white and the females are mostly gray. Big Emden have been very, very effective. They just have the advantage the way predators’ eyesight work. It actually makes their white color, makes ’em look bigger than they really are, and they are big anyway.

But yeah, geese are, can be very effective. Now, you know, they’re not gonna be effective against cougar. They’re not gonna be effective against bear. What we’ve found is they’re very effective against hawks, quite effective against fox, they’re pretty effective against coyotes, although that’s a little dicey. Some coyotes are much more aggressive than others.

But I will say electric fence, these portable electric fences, we use them quite extensively, and they were amazingly effective. We’ve got, I mean, coyotes are thick [00:44:00] here. Fox, raccoons, possums, skunks. The electric netting was tremendously effective. We never had a coyote go over the top of them, and we had very valuable geese. That was the only barrier between ’em during the breeding season. Keep the grass out of those electric fences.

[00:44:18] Are Geese Mean to Other Animals

Kenny Coogan: Now, will geese get along with other existing livestock or pets on people’s property, or do the listeners have to watch out for specific things when introducing the geese?

Dave Holderread: Yeah, in general, if they are raised there around them, it’s not an issue. Sometimes when you’re bringing in adult geese, I tell people, I have no idea how they’re gonna react to their environment and the occupants of their farm. I’ve seen so many different responses that I don’t even try to guess. On average, they’ll get along, but you’ll see personality conflicts.

The thing to keep in mind is geese [00:45:00] are just like people. They’ve got different personalities, they’ve got different likes and dislikes, and trying to predict is kind of futile. My standard line is observe and adapt, but in general, I mean, they get along amazingly well with a wide variety of stuff. Oddly enough, we would often have a mating of ducks and geese in the same enclosure. I would say nine times out of 10, if we were gonna have an issue, it was with the male ducks harassing the female geese. Countless times, I would stand there and say to the goose, just stand up. You don’t have to do anything. Just stand up and face them. And what the female geese would tend to do would be go in a corner and try to hide. And the ducks and male ducks would be all over ’em. I’m not saying this is universal or anything, but if we were gonna have a problem, that was usually the problem.

[00:45:54] How to Raise Geese for Eggs and Meat

Kenny Coogan: Now, earlier you mentioned that everyone has an opinion about like the best [00:46:00] companion goose and the best guard goose, but you’re the expert. So I wanna ask you, what is your favorite goose breed for meat? And is it always a heavy breed?

Dave Holderread: No. You know, I don’t have a favorite. If you want, you know, if you want a big roasting bird, then obviously you’ve gotta go with a big breed. Fortunately, some of the, I mean, some of the most heavily muscled, now I’m talking about proportionately, we have are the Oregon minis that we made. It’s the smallest recognized breed here in the U.S. Some of those birds only weigh five or six pounds. The muscle development on the breast is exceeds, proportionately, the big breeds. It just depends what size of bird you want as a roasting bird. You know, some people are, have strong opinions between the Africans and Chinese versus the European breeds. I will say, I’m a little dubious that they can actually tell [00:47:00] it. Yeah, they, they might have a much more delicate palate than I do.

Kenny Coogan: Is there a, is there a goose breed that ‘s more prolific at laying eggs?

Dave Holderread: On average, the White Chinese is the best laying breed, and there’s a good reason for that. For years, they were selectively bred for egg production, whereas most breeds have not had a lot of selection done on ’em for egg production. But the, the White Chinese, there was a, and I’m not sure, I assume there are people, especially in, in Asia and Europe, there’s still, I don’t know of anybody here in the states that are actually doing the trap nesting and that kind of stuff. On average, the White Chinese will outlay, oftentimes by at least double, other, other breeds and varieties.

The, the whites tend to lay a lot better than the browns ’cause the browns were bred more for show and decoration, whereas the whites were raised [00:48:00] commercially.

Kenny Coogan: Is there a goose breed that is known to be the friendliest, or is it still individual by individual?

Dave Holderread: I, I have not found. You know, in every breed we raised, if multiple family lines and strains were available, we, we had multiple, few of the very rarest, no options of other ones. But it does vary. There are natural tendencies among different family lines. I have had, over the years, I’ve had people tell me their favorite breed because of their temperament was this breed or that breed. And it’s been every breed recognized in the U.S. And I’ve had people on the opposite side tell me they’d never raised that breed ’cause they’re so mean.

And again, it’s been every breed known. Again, it depends on the experience of the birds before you get ’em, if they’re adults, and how how they’ve been managed. I have never had a goose I didn’t get along with. You know, some of ’em took a little more effort, but once we [00:49:00] got an understanding, it was fine.

So it, it’s just a matter of taking the time and taking care of problems now. If you take care of the problems today, you’re not gonna have to keep dealing with it day after day.

Kenny Coogan: So about 20 years ago, maybe a little bit longer, when I was a teenager, I definitely acquired some Dutch Hookbills and Silky Australian Spotted and several ducks from you. I don’t think I got the geese from you at that same time, but I had some Brown Chinese, and I don’t, I don’t think you would approve of this, but I would hold one like a baby, and I would walk around the backyard. And it would like spoon with me. And it was just the friendliest goose. And one day I was holding it like a baby in my arms, and our neighbor walked by. And it bit her in the breast.

Dave Holderread: That is very common. They be, they become very attached to certain people. I did the same thing when I was a youngster. I mean, I [00:50:00] carry, I carried my geese around and then they were my buddies. They would get after some of my family members, you know, and, and if you have an understanding with a goose, you just have to be willing that if they do get snotty with you, you’ve gotta say, you know what? That doesn’t work. And there, again, I’m not talking about being mean to ’em or stuff, but just being firm. And sometimes all you have to do is just in a very firm voice, shaking your finger at ’em, saying, no. I’m fine with people having, having pet geese. As long as they understand that it may make them real aggressive toward other people. And they may be aggressive toward you when they become sexually mature if, if you do not follow through with appropriate training.

[00:50:49] How to Identify Male and Female Geese

Kenny Coogan: Now, we have another message from a Mother Earth News follower. Stony Mountain Farm asks, “how can I tell a female goose from a male [00:51:00] goose?”

Dave Holderread: That that is always the question. That’s one reason why when we came back from Puerto Rico, we initially focused on the Pilgrim goose because it was so nice. From the moment they hatched, you knew exactly what gender they were just because of the color of their down, and then later on of their feathers. It can be tough. I mean, as long as I’ve raised geese, just visually looking at ’em, you know, especially birds I don’t know. If I go someplace and people say, oh, I’ve got these three month old geese. Look at ’em. Tell me what gender they are. And it’s hard. There’s no feather structure or feather coloration except for the breeds that are auto-sexing, like the Pilgrim and the Cotton Patch and the the Shetland geese, which are auto-sexing by color. There’s nothing other than, usually the males are slightly bigger, usually, especially by the time they’re six months old, [00:52:00] they’re often a half to a full head taller, if they’re from the same breed and the same strain.

Some people can sex ’em by their voice, and my ear is not good enough to do it. My nephew and niece that grew up here on the farm, they were champions at sexing by the time geese were, oh, especially three to four months old, they could sex ’em by voice. And so we’d do little experiments. We’d have a group of birds, and they would be catching ’em, and they’d tell me what sex it was, and then I would vent sex them. And, and, and I mean, they were stellar at that. They’re both musicians, and so they could, they could hear style, you know, and they try to tell me, and I’m like, yeah, I don’t really hear it.

With experience, by just watching behavior, in general, ganders do stuff with their heads and necks more exaggerated than the females do. But then you’ll get some more aggressive [00:53:00] females that will kind of fool you. In general by just watching them, by the time they’re four months old or so, I can usually tell what they are. But on non-auto-sexing varieties, I vent sex ’em. And that is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

For people that wanna learn how, there are illustrations and stuff of that, how you go about it. And I tell people, just be patient with it. Be gentle. You can’t injure the birds doing it. They can injure you doing it. That is one of the difficulties with geese is telling the gender. Once you get, been around them long enough, just from behavior, on fully mature birds, I can usually tell in just seconds by watching them a little bit what gender they are.

[00:53:44] Oregon Mini Geese Breed and Breeding Geese for Specific Traits

Kenny Coogan: All right, Dave, I would like to ask you two last questions. You mentioned just recently, the Oregon Mini Geese, and that was a breed that was developed at the Holderread Waterfowl Farm and Preservation Center. So can you talk about why did you choose [00:54:00] to create this breed?

Dave Holderread: It was about 1985. We were at a, a national waterfowl show .And after the judging was done, the judge, Lou Horton, who was from Illinois and a stellar purebred waterfowl breeder and judge, came up to me and said, I have a picture and a small article about a miniature goose that Reginald Appleyard in Great Britain made sometime before 1940. And he said, as far as I know, they disappeared, but I think you could recreate those. Or make a miniature goose.

Kenny Coogan: Is this person related to the Silver Appleyard duck?

Dave Holderread: Same person. He just planted that seed in my head. And so I thought, well, that would be an interesting project, and it would also give me a chance to do further genetic studies on colors and stuff. And so I started just keeping an eye out for smaller [00:55:00] geese.

Anyway, it was a long process. And you know, we, we were, we had the Tufted Roman geese, which at that time, were about the smallest, except for Chinese. I mean some, some Chinese had been bred for show are quite small. I was interested more in a European type bird. We just started watching and then we got, we got the Plainheaded Romans that don’t have tufts, and those were out of birds imported from Great Britain.

Then, we got the Shetlands, the Shetland geese, and they were actually the smallest geese we had at that point, doing color genetics. And I thought, well, I can do a bunch of color genetic studies on these smaller geese and see what we, where we go from there.

Then some friends that raised wild water fowl had a pair of Pacific White-Fronted wild geese and they lost the gander. And they called me up and said, do you have anything in your miniature goose project you’d like to breed to this female? And I said, you [00:56:00] know, I’ve got a Shetland gander straight from the Shetland Islands that I haven’t been able to get to mate up with any of the females I’ve offered him. I wonder if I move him to a new place. I said, that’s a long shot. Anyway, we took the gander to him. Well, he mated up with this White-Fronted female, and they produced two goslings. And that actually was really gave us a big boost in the Oregon minis. Half breds were bred back to domestic geese.

Our smallest ones at this point are five to six pounds. And we’re not really trying to make ’em any smaller ’cause we’ve kind of hit a dead end and found that if they get smaller than that, they’re not very hardy. It’s been a fun project. We’re still working with ’em. Giving me a chance to study goose colors.

Kenny Coogan: Is the Oregon mini goose, is it a registered breed yet?

Dave Holderread: It is not.

Kenny Coogan: I understand how you can create a breed. You’re selecting traits, you know, and then you get rid of the offspring that you don’t like, and then you keep breeding. But you have five, or you’re working on, or you [00:57:00] have five, dimorphic colors and eight non dimorphic colors. So my question is, how do you have a breed, but how do you like introduce the different colors? And maybe you just answered it by, do you add outside genes with non “Oregon mini geese” to get new colors?

Dave Holderread: We actually used birds, and some of these birds were not breeds, per se. We would look for small domestic geese. We used the Tufted Romans and the Plainheaded Romans, the the Shetlands. And then we actually, there was a woman told me one time she had gotten some other birds from us, and she said, oh, you know, I’ve got some Sebastopols that are really small. And I, I was curious. So we went to her place. They were tiny. So we got some from her.

And oddly enough, from those birds, we produced some of the best shows Sebastopols we ever had. The main reason they were small was they were so inbred. [00:58:00] We found that when we outcrossed them, the size really jumped up. But I did use a couple of those smallest ones in our Oregon Mini originally, way back in the beginning. Those birds, under the white, these were White Sebastopols, carried some rare genetic colors that did not show up because the white covered ’em up.

So those and the other breeds that I mentioned were really the found– well, and then the Pacific White-Front– they were the foundation for the Oregon Minis. All the colors have come out of those birds. And the great thing about white breeds of anything is the white is just covering up all kinds of color genes. The White Sebastopols gave us an array of colors. The Shetlands gave us the auto-sexing. The White Tufted Romans and the White Plainheaded Romans, they also gave us some colored genes. So that’s why we have so many color genes in that breed.

Kenny Coogan: And when you got it to [00:59:00] like the breed to like a specific shape and color, you can just, say, add some outside genes from these birds and just keep breeding back to the same? I’m just wondering like why you don’t get like a different shaped goose, I guess, when you add a different colored bird.

Dave Holderread: Our foundation birds, they all tended to have smallish, roundish bodies, except for the Pacific White-Front. They had longer necks, longer legs, a longer, flatter body. And at this point all of our Oregon Minis have some Pacific White-Front in ’em. So we do see some variation in body shape, neck length, and, and leg length.

One of the good things about having the variety of colors in ’em is it helps reduce inbreeding depression. Having slightly different body conformations also helps with that. Where you get a problem is where your birds or your animals are so genetically similar to each other, get into [01:00:00] inbreeding depression. So I actually like having some variety, and especially with the colors. That automatically gives us a lot of heterosis for those sites.

Mentioning the Hookbill ducks, immediately the imported birds from Great Britain occasionally started throwing different colors. And so we would always keep those, ’cause we knew that that would give us a little bit of heterosis.

Kenny Coogan: Which is also known as “hybrid vigor.”

Dave Holderread: Hybrid, correct.

Kenny Coogan: Yeah. Well, in another podcast when we interviewed Jeannette Berranger from the Livestock Conservancy, we were talking about the Dutch Hookbill, which is a duck breed. I don’t think they’re registered as a breed yet, right?

Dave Holderread: Not in this country or, or North America. In some of the European countries, they are.

Kenny Coogan: And in order to do that, do you have to have one color done, or can, or can you show all the colors?

Dave Holderread: So you have to standardize, you have to get [01:01:00] recognized each variety separately.

Kenny Coogan: You have to have at least one variety to begin with.

Dave Holderread: Correct.

[01:01:06] Wrapping Up with Dave Holderread and Podcast Credits

Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much, Dave, for speaking with me and doing this podcast. Our conversation on raising geese– and a little bit about Dutch Hookbills, which I secretly love and I wanna be professional Dutch Hookbill breeder when I grow up one day– has been very entertaining and educational. And I’m positive our listeners will enjoy it too.

Dave Holderread: Well, geese can bring a lot of interest to life. And I hope people understand that just because they’re a little more complicated than some, that it’s well worth it.

And one thing I’ll throw out. If you’re geese or acting strange toward you, take a look at what you’re wearing. If you normally don’t wear sunglasses and you suddenly do, they can be very reactive to something like that. Or, or certain colors of purple and red, they seem to be very [01:02:00] reactive to. And so, look at what you’re wearing and the way you’re presenting yourself. I’ve had situations where I go out with sunglasses, and the birds are acting startled and uptight. And I take the sunglasses off, and I just immediately relax. Or I’m wearing the wrong color. And so, be aware of that kind of thing.

Kenny Coogan: All right. Thank you, Dave, for all the tips and information. We really appreciate it.

Dave Holderread: You’re very welcome.

Kenny Coogan: We thank you, the listener, for joining our podcast and encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues, and family. To listen to more podcasts and to learn more, visit our website, www.MotherEarthNews.com. You can also follow our social media platforms from that link and ask questions for future podcasts. And remember, no matter how brown your thumb is, you can always cultivate kindness.

John Moore: You’ve just heard our episode about raising geese with Dave Holderread. You can reach us at [01:03:00] Podcast@OgdenPubs.com with any comments or suggestions.

Our podcast production team includes Jessica Mitchell, John Moore, Kenny Coogan, and Alyssa Warner.

Music for this episode is “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw.

This Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications. Learn more about us at www.MotherEarthNews.com.

[01:03:28] Brinsea Ad

John Moore: Thanks again to Brinsea, our sponsor for this Mother Earth News and Friends podcast episode.

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Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.

Meet Dave Holderread

Dave Holderread, author of Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks, has raised ducks for nearly 50 years. He and his wife have established one of the largest genetic stocks of domestic waterfowl in the world on their farm in Oregon, and their ducks have won numerous championships at regional and national shows. Holderread teaches in vocational poultry programs throughout North America.

Resources on How to Raise Geese

• Check our Holderread Farm
• Thanks to Brinsea for sponsoring this episode!

Our Podcast Team

Jessica Mitchell, John Moore, Kenny Coogan, and Alyssa Warner
Music: “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw

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The Mother Earth News and Friends podcasts are a production of Ogden Publications.

Ogden Publications strives to inspire “can-do communities,” which may have different locations, backgrounds, beliefs, and ideals. The viewpoints and lifestyles expressed within Ogden Publications articles are not necessarily shared by the editorial staff or policies but represent the authors’ unique experiences.