Feeding geese: breeding features, feeding norms and diet, advice from experienced farmers

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Among all kinds of poultry, geese are held in high esteem. From breeding chickens, as a rule, the owners have high hopes for eggs, while geese are kept for the sake of tasty and juicy meat. It is not as dietary as chicken, due to its high fat content, but also includes useful trace elements, including vitamins A, B and C. It is also suitable for replenishing iron, zinc, and manganese in the body. But it is worth considering that feeding geese is not the easiest task, but at the same time not the most difficult. However, we can definitely say - all this is worth some effort!

Residence conditions

Geese prefer to live in a company, and therefore the breeding of birds must be started with at least 2 individuals. From birth, goslings get used to each other and they will not accept a stranger into their environment. Chicks are usually kept in small boxes or cages. However, such a placeenough for only a few days - goslings grow quickly and require more extensive premises.

And since chicks mostly spend time on the floor, you should take care of creating comfortable conditions for them:

• Must have dry bedding and change daily.
• Ventilate the area with the birds, avoiding drafts.
• Maintain the required room temperature.
• Lighting should be at least 10-15 during the day.

As for the size of the paddock, here it is worth considering the number of special ones in the flock. In close quarters, the birds will feel unwell, get sick, and their growth and development will slow down. Therefore, it is important that the birds feel the space. In addition, there should be a place for walking nearby. This is especially important for raising geese at home, as well as feeding.

Adult geese can also walk in severe frosts, as they are already protected from the cold by fat deposits. In the summer, they can be released into the meadow to graze. However, the area must be fenced off. Domestic birds, although they are heavy and fly in rare cases, can not resist the call of nature. If necessary, they will be able to find a way out.

What's on the goose menu

Farmers who keep geese need to adjust the diet of these birds, depending on local conditions. Just do not rely on how it is done in many poultry farms. The menu of this bird differs significantly from the feeding of other representatives of domestic flora and fauna. No grain to anyonedoes not affect their development in any way - they feel great and grow.

However, there are certain norms for raising and feeding geese at home, which are highly recommended not to be ignored during their feeding. For the proper development, growth and he alth of large birds, it is necessary to provide them with fresh herbs. But before compiling a menu, it is worth deciding what exactly should be included in the diet of geese. At the same time, different groups of birds should have their own diet and the food that is given to small birds is not suitable for laying hens.

Like any animal, geese also need the required amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Grains and grass serve as the main source of carbohydrates, including a number of vegetables - potatoes, beets, carrots. In one day, a bird is able to eat about 2 kg of greens, from 100 to 150 grams of grain and up to 1 kg of vegetables.

In addition, an important role is played by proteins, which are necessary for weight gain and active growth. Their birds can learn from products of plant and animal origin. Most of the protein is found in legumes. When feeding ducks and geese, you should also pay attention to the cake of various oilseeds - it also contains a considerable amount of protein. As for animal products, it is better to give preference to fish and meat and bone meal, cottage cheese, skim milk, sour milk.

Fats are present in cereals, bran, meal and cake of sunflower, flax, soybeans, cotton. The need for fats is not very large and norm althe daily ration is enough to satisfy her. At the same time, the energy value of the daily diet should be from 800 to 900 kcal.

Grass

Green food is the basis of the geese's diet, and most of it includes the use of grass. One has only to release the birds for free grazing, as they themselves will find suitable feeding for themselves. For full development, each adult goose needs to eat up to 2 kg of fresh grass. Therefore, it is desirable that there is a large meadow near the house, where the birds will feel comfortable and not deny themselves food.

If the features of caring for and feeding geese at home do not include pasture, then geese can replenish the greenery with weeds from the garden, herbs, tops. Poultry simply love lupins, alfalfa, clover, but they will not refuse if you give them peas, beans, lentils.

Mixed feed

With the help of compound feed and grain mixtures, poultry feeding will be much more efficient and faster. In any agricultural store you can buy a special balanced diet for geese. As a rule, such a product is sold in the form of granules, due to which the digestion process is greatly simplified.

However, compound feed can be prepared independently, for which it is better to use ground grain. In its whole form, it is poorly digested in the stomach of birds. Cereals that are great for fattening geese are corn, oats and wheat. In this case, the corn should be ground, and the oats should be steamed. Wheat is served as bran. You can improve the taste of food withyeast, or steam the grain flour in advance, and then mix it wet with herbs.

Usually, geese are fed dry feed. But if industrial feeding is replaced by a grain mixture prepared by oneself, additional minerals and vitamins should be added.

Water

We should not forget about water, because everyone living on planet Earth needs it. Geese not only drink it, they like to rinse their beak and nostrils in a drinking bowl. For this reason, their contents must be regularly updated with clean water. In addition, it is advisable to put a separate container with river sand or fine gravel next to it. This is important for the full functioning of the digestive system of birds.

If there is a reservoir near the garden plot, then in the summer you can give a slightly smaller amount of food. In the water, birds will catch small crustaceans and be content with algae. Such nutrition will provide them with useful minerals, which will significantly improve the quality of their meat.

Feeding and caring for geese in summer

In summer, feeding poultry will not cause any problems and is less expensive than in winter. From the farmer, practically nothing else is required, how to drive the birds out into the meadow to graze. In addition, the quality of grass geese are unpretentious.

Many farmers try to feed their poultry in the evenings. This allows you to tame them in time to return to the paddock. A sample menu might look like this (based on one goose per day):

• 100 g barley, oats orgrain mix;
• 30g whole or chopped corn;
• 45g wheat or rye bran;
• 3g lentils, peas, beans;
• 20g herbal flour;
• 400g sugar beets;
• 100 g boiled potatoes;
• 8 g shells with chalk and feed fat.

It is worth considering that geese are able to gather the required 2 kg of grass on pasture and therefore a large amount of summer feeding is not needed.

But it should also be understood that their weight gain depends not only on the maintenance and feeding of geese, the chosen breed of birds is also a key factor. Some representatives have enough grass in the pasture, while others need additional feeding.

Although geese are not very demanding on herbs, they do not like some of them. These include sedge and goose cinquefoil. And if such plants are present in the meadow, then the birds will simply avoid such places. But wild and domestic grasses of the cereal family are especially respected by geese. But most of all they prefer young shoots - they eat such grass faster, which is only good. For its intensive growth, the meadow should be manually mowed regularly.

Features of the winter diet

How to feed geese in such a cold season? In winter, the maintenance of birds is complicated by the fact that it is impossible to release them on pasture for obvious reasons. Although geese are not picky about food, they should be provided with proper nutrition to quickly gain weight.

In particular, feeding geese in winterimplies the presence of various kinds of grains in the bird menu:

• barley;
• corn;
• oats;
• millet.

Important! It should be noted that corn in any form (whole grains or cereals) is a rather high-calorie product, and therefore it is not recommended to overfeed it.

The basis of the diet in winter is cereals and root crops. Geese are fed mainly with barley, oats, wheat, corn. Vegetables include potatoes and beets. Moreover, it is better to pre-cook potatoes or peel them. It is also necessary to monitor the condition of this root crop - it is better not to give overgrown tubers or with green areas to birds, as this is detrimental to them. This is due to the content of solanine, which is a poison for poultry.

Beets, on the contrary, are allowed in their raw form, only it should be crushed beforehand. Geese menu in winter:

• 40 to 50 grams of corn;
• 25g legume;
• 60 g bone and fish meal;
• 50g herbal flour;
• 20g pine needles or pine flour;
• 5g yeast;
• 5g cottage cheese or eggs;
• 80 potatoes;
• 250g beets;
• 10g shell chalk;
• 2.5g phosphate flour;
• 1.5g s alt.

At the same time, geese should be fed at least three times a day. It is also necessary to ensure that food and water are not too cold. You can dilute the yeast in advance, add it to the feed and put it in a warm place for an hour. Fermentation will begin, resulting in the formation of lactic acid, whichwill be useful to geese.

The need for vitamins increases with the advent of winter. Therefore, you should also stock up on feed. And since there are not so many useful minerals in feeding, it is for this reason that yeast is included in the diet. They contain B vitamins.

When compiling a menu for geese, it is recommended to pay attention to silage. This is a special preparation of herbs and vegetable tops, in which all useful properties are preserved. Silage is able to fully replace pasture feeding. Also, with its help, birds will be able to supply their bodies with all the necessary vitamins.

Feeding geese at home for beginner farmers

It is known that a balanced diet is necessary for the full development of geese. But how can you understand if the diet of poultry is correct? This will be indicated to farmers by the appropriate behavior of waterfowl. And if we take into account the absence of any disease in geese, then the following manifestations can serve as true signs:

• Intestinal disorder in young animals. The reason may lie in the excess of green fodder and water. You should limit the amount of greens, partially replacing it with porridge or dry yolk. It is also recommended to lower the drinking rate.
• Cough and difficulty breathing. This can be caused by improper feeding of geese at home (abuse of birds with dry flour food). Reduce the amount of food immediately while increasing the moisture content of the feed. Nearby it is recommended to install additional feeders with moistenedsand or shell rock - the birds will clean their esophagus on their own.
• In especially severe cases, it is necessary to forcibly fill them with water. Then, during the day, the bird should be given vegetable or hard food, and after that the food is carried out in the usual way.
• When eating grass in the pasture, geese are usually able to recognize dangerous plants and avoid them. But this applies more to adults, while young animals can eat hemlock or nightshade leaves. And since these herbs are poisonous to geese, vigilance should be exercised. But if poisoning has occurred, you should give the bird plenty of fluids or do a gastric lavage.
• Indigestion. This disease is also associated with feeding geese at home and can be caused by silt, shells and fish that birds catch in the water. Together with them, in the stomach of birds, there are infectious pathogens to which their immunity is unusual. Often this happens during the very first water walking of geese. In this case, the use of antibiotics is necessary. In the future, the birds will develop a protective reaction to such pathogens.

By taking all these recommendations, you can not only detect any discrepancies in a timely manner, but also take the necessary measures in a timely manner.

How to feed the broodstock

During the normal period, in the absence of mating and laying eggs, birds feed just like everyone else. However, for those representatives who have been selected for procreation, it is necessary to monitor more closely so that they do not gain excess weight. obesemothers are bad. And this also applies to ganders - they lose the ability to fully fertilize eggs.

Approximately a month before laying eggs, the female geese's diet changes towards increased nutrition, with the inclusion of vitamins in the feed. An approximate daily ration for breeding females might be:

• compound feed or grains - from 220 to 250 g;
• animal products (cottage cheese, bone meal, sour milk) - from 25 to 30 g;
• amount of succulent feed (root crops, silage) - 500 g.

Yeast and mineral additives must be added. The presence of milk and bone meal in the diet is very important, as this avoids the lack of protein in the body of the goose. Otherwise, the consequences will be undesirable - the female will begin to peck at the eggs and eat her own offspring.

As for males, their standard daily geese feeding ration should be expanded with an additional menu:

• sprouted grains - 100 g;
• carrots - 50 g;
• cottage cheese or eggs - 10 g.

Thanks to this additional feeding, the sexual power of males will increase, which will positively affect the process of fertilization. If he eats little, then this will negatively affect the performance of his direct duties.

Baby food

With the nutrition of adults, everything is now clear, but what about the born goslings? You can feed them immediately after they are completely dry. To start themit is worth giving eggs or cottage cheese, previously finely chopped. As for greens, from the first day of their life you can treat them with nettle, quinoa, ordinary grass.

At the same time, during the first week, goslings should be fed every 2-3 hours, at least. It is also necessary to monitor their drinking and change their water more often (chicks love water procedures). For this, you can add a little potassium permanganate to the drinker to color the water in a faint pink hue and then bathing will be useful.

And when the young are a week old, feeding the geese at home switches to using grain and boiled porridge. Eggs at this age are no longer given, instead, peas, reverse, sour milk are introduced into the diet - this is also a source of protein. In addition, half of the entire diet is greens, and therefore the young can be released into the yard to pinch the grass.

Goslings of two weeks of age are given a mixture of peas with cereals and greens. In this case, the mash should be crumbly so that the beak and nostrils do not stick. Feeding frequency - 5-6 times a day.

Monthly goslings can already be transferred to three meals a day. Their diet may be the same as that of adults, but adjusted for body weight. Food should be given exclusively fresh, without a hint of mold. If the offspring was obtained from a goose, then she usually looks after her children herself.

Growing young animals in the absence of a mother is quite troublesome and requires increased attention from the farmer when drawing up the correct diet for feeding geese. And this despitethe fact that goslings live in a paddock and learn to get their own food.

Advice from experienced farmers

Beginning farmers who are thinking about breeding geese can be helped by some advice from experienced poultry farmers. And first of all, it is worth clarifying how much to keep such a bird at home. As many experienced farmers note, geese should be kept on the farm for no more than 4 months. That is how much time it will take for the bird to gain weight, reaching an indicator of 3.2 to 3.7 kg. In the future, the increase will be less intense, and poultry keeping may become unprofitable.

Lindovsky, Kholmogory and governor's geese are the most popular. The latter variety is the youngest breed for effective breeding. In Russia, it was launched in 2011. In just 9 weeks, which is just over two months, ganders reach 4.35 kg and geese reach 4.00 kg.

Another useful tip is to cross a female and a male from different breeds. As a result, fast-growing young animals will be born, which will develop more rapidly than purebred offspring.

In order to avoid poisoning when feeding goslings, it is necessary to carefully examine the place for their walking. In the spring, before going to the pasture, the birds should be fed so that they eat less grass. This contributes to the gradual addiction to juicy food.

Result

Growing geese is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. It is necessary to strictly adhere to certain rules, and then the offspring will fully develop.

At the same time, you can choose any of the options for yourself - every spring to buy week-old chicks or start a broodstock. Each case has its advantages and disadvantages.