Ruben van Boso

Thank you for your replies and input!


@Bryzantium

Didn't know about the duck/geese forum. Maybe a moderator will be able to move my thread?

The water and shade has been taken into account, that will not be a big issue.

btw, I'm actually far from a hippie. If it's possible to make +- 600 dollars to manage 2.5 acres with an animal that would recquire no additional feeding, no registration, very little shelter and medication you could generate a nice (extra) income from this. But you'd have to find out probably through trial and error if they will consume enough vegetation. The shepherd which uses his sheep pastured with electric netting covers 50-60 acres and can add 16k dollars to his annual income with such little effort that it's just a side job to him. He's recently been contracted by the municipality to extent to more acres. Paying him and his sheep to do this is a lot cheaper than having someone on a lownmower to this every month from march-september.

@Alder

Geese in town are somewhat of an issue over here but more so farmers complaining about feral geese stripping the fields from lush fresh green goodies.
I have thought about the noise but since this will not be anywhere near as close as say 150yards to the nearest house, I don't think the noise will be an issue.

I've thought about the manure. But same as for noise applies to the manure in my opinion, at least to some extent. As long as the animals wouldn't use paths/road/bikeroads to dump the manure.

The geese will be kept just like the sheep, in electrified sheep netting. This should protect the geese from predators (dogs, cats, foxes, badgers, polecats etc). But it should also keep the geese in, so I do not have to worry about them being agressive towards people. But their attitude is a major pro to me why I've thought about them, I can not babysit them and have to rely on themselves to scare of any human predators which might think about entering the fenced pasture without invitation.


I like the muscovy a lot, only reason why I haven't really thought about them anymore than just that is that I think (please do correct me!) that a goose will be more able to protect itself and will eat more grass/vegetation. To avoid registration but make this work to some extent I would have to be able to match sheep grazing power with as the smallest number of poultry/fowl per sheep. I was hoping 2/3 birds to match 1 sheep, although if you compare the lbs of grazing power 3 geese total to I'm pretty sure you'd need more to equal a sheep. I hope they have a surprise up their sleeve. I could certainly mix in some muscovies just to try them and see how much they will eat and maybe if proper breeding will make them any bigger.


I've contacted some municipalities and agencies, due to the summer season it's a bit difficult to get in touch with the one you need. Hope I'll find out a bit more next week, we'll see if they will let me have a go.

I've been enjoying permies for quite a while now, but have only just subscribed as a member.
I'm 27 year old, live in urban NW Europe, graduated last year at University where I've studied social and cultural sciences (history, sociology, filosophy, arts, literature etc.) My field of expertiece and passion is manly heritage in landscaping and architecture and how to preserve in a cost efficient and responsible way what we have. I've worked for a municipality over here for some time, have been in between jobs for two months and will start again in two weeks time.

Partly because I'm an animal freak, partly because I like to think I'm creative and can think of ways to generate income where others wouldn't be able to and partly because I'm always busy and involved in some odd project or endavour.

I live in a highly populated area which 50 years ago was highly industrialised through coal mining efforts. Twentyfive years ago all the former industrial sites have become forests, fields, recreational sites etc. Due to all this new outside green space municipalties have been confronted with quite high maintainance costs. In times of fewer and fewer € to spend, governments also become a bit more creative and think of ways to spend their money. A few years back one of the cities over here started to employ a herd of sheep to graze road sides, fields and open grounds. The added income which the owner of the herd can generate is substantial, it actually not really added but makes up for the largest part of his income. Due to regulations keeping sheep or goats is not the easiest to start a project with. You need all kinds of registration, have to vaccinate and medicate.

More and more municipalities have to cut on maintaining outside space and think about using natural grazing (animals). Usually the shepherds employ sheep, goats, heritage breed cows (in small numbers) or horses. Those using sheep or goats usually pasture the animals using electric netting to set of an area a 5000m2 (half a hectare) and let 25-50 sheep stay there for a week and them move them to another field.

I've never seen anyone use geese to complete such a task in the last 50-60 years. Personally I'd like to give that a try, I've kept them in small numbers before and don't really understand why employing them hasn't been tried recently. Is there something which they now and I don't?

Compared to a sheep geese are:

- a lot cheaper to purchase, €150 for a lamb vs €0.5 for an egg which I can hatch or €1,50 for a pullet.
- I can hatch the geese myself with a machine in large numbers
- because of this geese are a lot cheaper to replace each year or several years.
- sheep need medication, vaccination, registration in all numbers. Geese don't, up to 250 neither the geese or I need to do anything like that.
- sheep require shaving (which doesn't bring in any money over here), geese don't.
- sheep recquire hoof and teith care, geese don't

-downside is that there is no real market over here anymore for geese products and I'm only allowed to sell geese to the actual user/consumer.


My idea would be to approach (i'm actually in this fase right now) several municipalities in my area and get their permission to let me use some of their fields that have to be maintained any way as a pilot project geese grazing for a year. I'd like to start with 25-50 geese to keep it manageable and to find out what I don't know. I'm mainly concerned with what they will and won't eat when out free grazing/pastured 100% of the time year round and how much of it.
Since geese are just not used anymore no one over here can tell me about how many I'd need to maintain/ cut down a certain field and how fast I'd have to return. I'm hoping two geese will graze/eat as much as one sheep. Guess I have to find that out next year.

If it turns out that geese grazing is not for me or for the 21st century these 25-50 will end up making someone a nice meal. If it does work out to some extent I would like to increase to five flocks of fifty geese (to a total of 250). Before Christmas/winter I'd select/cull to keep the 10-20% procent (size/health/foraging/grazing/behaviour) and end up with a breeding group of 25-50 to keep during the winter.
When keeping geese I've noticed that the older they get, especially when past the first year and a half they start to eat taller grass, leaves, bark etc and not just the lush rich green grass.


Are there any members to might be able to shed some light upon how many geese per acre, which particular breed, how long to keep them, would you expect any particular problems in the field, does this sound like a feasible project etc etc?!


EDIT: I'm not a native speaker, sorry for any errors or faults in my posts.