Can I keep keeping geese?

I have nine large geese on about two acres. I also have a couple dairy cows that eat pasture when available. The geese are out competing the cows because the geese need to eat grass year-round, or so I'm always told. I'm looking into other ways of maintaining the geese that would be limited pasture, with mostly feeding alternative food. I've thought of sprouted grains, leftover hay from cows, and maybe doing compost (for the worms and bugs.

I'm curious what others do if they don't keep geese on grass all year round?

Hi Kevin,
This isn't exactly an answer, but I know a lot of old time farmers would reduce the numbers each winter. Whether it was chicken or geese or cows. Some are butchered so there are not as many mouths to feed in the winter. Then in the spring, they grow more.

Naturally this will not work well if you are keeping the geese as pets or for eggs. But if you are keeping them as lawn mowers or for meat, then it would help reduce how much food you need to help get through through the winters.

Personally, I think you probably have too many grass eaters, for 2 acres. Which critters go or stay is dependent on your priorities, finances, availability of hay storage, type & sizes of your critters, etc.  A couple mini cows and small-to-mid size breed geese would likely be fine, on 2acres. Full size Holsteins (some of the highest production dairy cows) plus large breed geese, not so much - especially if you want the geese to stay home. For me, I wouldn't be comfortable with even just 1 jersey cow and that many geese, if they're large ones.

I’m on about 4.6 acres but after removing pond and house and some other things it’s really more like 2.8 usable acres. I’ve been rotational grazing geese for two seasons pretty well on my small acreage. During the winter when there is snow over the ground I feed fermented grains, a flock raiser type feed, frozen peas in a bucket of water, and I’ve yet to try wheat straw but I’ve heard it works too.

I started with only three geese, then there was fifteen… yea you’re gonna need to process some for meat, it’s fantastic. I keep 7 adult breeders and then every winter I harvest that years goslings at 20-24 weeks of age.

Kevin Mac wrote:I have nine large geese on about two acres. I also have a couple dairy cows that eat pasture when available. The geese are out competing the cows because the geese need to eat grass year-round, or so I'm always told. I'm looking into other ways of maintaining the geese that would be limited pasture, with mostly feeding alternative food. I've thought of sprouted grains, leftover hay from cows, and maybe doing compost (for the worms and bugs.

I'm curious what others do if they don't keep geese on grass all year round?

This past winter we kept our geese on our garden.  Whenever there was not snow on the ground, they were picking whatever greens were available - I hope our weed load is lower this year, and that the fertilizer helps.
They expanded our garden area: I fenced slightly outside of our standard garden area, and they rooted up the grass and roots for me.
I built them a hut out of bad hay bales (ones that were too wet to put in the barn) and a pallet (Pallet was roof, with a couple of bales on tope of that as well.  The geese ignored the hut all winter, but now it is their primary egg-laying site.  They pulled hay in to make a nest in the center, makes egg collection easy.
I'm not sure how much of the hay they ate.  Not much.  It was there for them, but they didn't really want it.
I gave them whole shelled corn basically any time there was not obvious greenery for them to eat, and they got bread scraps, pizza crusts, etc as available.  I gave them some pelleted chicken food a couple of times, thinking I would round out their diet, but they refused to eat it.  After a couple of weeks, the songbirds had eaten all of it.  I figure that was a waste of feed in the grand scheme.  
Now they have access to that garden (very little green) and the adjacent wet grassy area.  They still spend a large portion of their day in the garden, nibbling the little weed sprouts, even though they have a lot of grass available.  

So... our geese had access to hay, shelled corn, and every couple of days they had bread scraps.  They thrived.  Laying plenty of eggs now, and I have 8 new goslings that need a new home (I already have 13 adult geese in that flock, plus 2 more of another breed that live with the ducks)
My geese show no inclination to raise their own goslings.  Even when I stopped collecting the eggs in years past and had geese make nests, no one seems to finish what they start.