Ellanor Ellwood wrote:I was just wondering about fattening up the birds without grain because I would like to be more independent of purchased feed which is mostly grain. I know there is easy to process grain but it stll takes up alot of room and there annuals needing a human to reseed them every year.
I would suggest that scale
should be a major contributing factor. How many birds do you have in mind? Independence from purchased inputs is great in theory, but if all you'd be saving yourself is a couple bags of feed a year you might consider whether the ideology is worth it. Maybe it is, or maybe you decide your labor is better spent elsewhere and you shell out a few bucks at the feed store.
Practically, I'd suggest foraging acorns as a source of fattening carbohydrates. My understanding is that acorns make for a more liquid fat than grains, though, at least in pigs, so that's something to consider. But could be that waterfowl process the feeds entirely differently.
You could also be independent of purchased feeds while still benefiting from the use of grains by gleaning
local fields. Depending on how many birds you're planning, this could be entirely feasible.
Of
course, what you use to fatten birds doesn't have to come from elsewhere. Maybe growing your own corn is a valid option. Let's suppose you decide to raise 10 geese, allowing them to graze from spring to late fall, then fattening them on corn for 4 weeks prior to slaughter. Allowing one pound of corn per bird per day (which should be plenty), you'd need 280 lbs. of corn. We'll assume that by your good care on a small plot of land you are able to harvest at a rate of 200 bushels per acre. At 56 lbs. of shelled corn per bushel, that's 11,200 lbs. per acre. You need 280 lbs., which equates to 1/40 acre, or 1089 square feet. That's a plot 33' square. Once the corn gets big enough, you can even graze the geese in the corn patch and make the land do double duty. Oh, and grow pole beans and squash there too, for animal food or human food or both.