Our Domestic Birds by John H. Robinson
The wild geese will mate with domestic geese
=The Canada Goose, or American Wild Goose.= Few persons in America have not at some time seen a flock of wild geese flying in wedgelike formation as they migrate in the spring and fall. Their honking can often be heard when they cannot be seen. Hunters watch for these flocks and, when they are flying low, sometimes shoot them as they pass, but the favorite method of hunting wild geese is to induce them to approach a hunter concealed where he can get a better shot at them. For this kind of hunting, shooting stands are built near bodies of water where wild geese may alight in their passage. These stands are either concealed in the bushes or masked by green boughs. In order to bring near the stands any wild geese that may alight of their own accord, and also to attract any flying by, captive wild geese are used as decoys. At first the birds used for this purpose were those crippled but not killed by the hunters and kept in confinement. As the supply secured in this way was small, and as the wild birds bred readily in captivity, the breeding of wild geese for decoys soon became quite common in districts where the shooting of this kind of game was good. The wild geese will mate with domestic geese, producing a sterile hybrid called a mongrel goose.
[Illustration: Fig. 147. A pet Canada gander. (Photograph from George E. Parrett)]
[Illustration: Fig. 148. Mongrel Geese on a Rhode Island farm]
MANAGEMENT OF GEESE
Geese will bear confinement well if given proper attention, but they require such large quantities of succulent green food that it does not pay to grow them where they cannot secure most of this by foraging. Very few people who keep geese in inclosures too small to furnish them with good pasture can conveniently supply them with all the green food that they need. Hence no one engages in growing geese in close quarters for profit. Many, however, grow a few geese under such conditions because of the interest a small flock affords. Goose growing cannot be developed on intensive lines as duck growing has been. One obstacle to this is the difficulty of supplying green food under such conditions. Another is that the average egg production is small. The description of the management of geese on farms will show more fully why this branch of poultry culture is likely always to be restricted to general farms.