Permaculture with Geese

Permaculture is utilizing the behavior and natural tendencies of animals and plants to create an ecosystem that is more sustainable and beneficial for the farmer. Some of the easiest animals to start permaculture with are poultry. Ducks and geese can be an easy and beneficial add to your permaculture farm.

Geese are grazers, but they are selective in what they eat. You can weed train them when they are young. You do this by picking the weeds that are abundant on your land and added them fresh daily into the brooder. Your goslings will pick at them and acquire a taste for them. Once they are bigger and outside make sure your brooding them in areas, with the weeds you want them to eat or still picking them fresh daily to add into their pen.

A goose will always prefer grass and they will travel to find it, if allowed, from the first sprouts in spring to the die-back in fall. In the warm months, if they have enough room to forage you will notice they will hardly touch the grains you provide if at all. If you have a problem with grass creeping up on your garden plot, if your orchard trees are lower hanging and harder to mow around, if you have a vineyard, or simply just not enough time to mow certain areas geese might be your permaculture ticket!

Think about how you will keep your garden closed off to them if you plan on fully free-ranging them, there are certain leafy greens in the garden that geese would love to eat. But you could also supervise them in the garden and get them weeding areas away from their favorite veggies. I would suggest starting them on a raspberry patch, who likes to weed in those thorny patches, not I! Or in an orchard. If you would like to rotate them so that they cannot pay too much attention to one area you can train them to a small light weight fence that you can easily move every few days or as needed. If you plan on keeping them out at night I would suggest you at least get a portable netted solar electric fence for some protection for them. If you have working dogs this might not be needed. You will just have to think and assess what will work for your situation.

Geese are a pretty self-sufficient birds, they do need a shelter to keep them out of the weather and for predator protection, minimal supplemental feeding in the warm months and fresh clean water. But they will go about their business without needing human encouragement to weed and graze for you. You will be able to enjoy their large eggs in spring, can harvest their meat in the fall, and they will be an added alarm system against predators. Even if you decide to keep them in a permanent pen you can still start with a thick deep layer of mulch, I'd suggest woodchips, covering manure as needed with more mulch. This will allow the bottom layers to start to break down and turn into compost, you can then add this nutrient rich compost to your gardens. If should not smell if done properly! You can toss the geese leafy veggie scraps and weeds/grass into their pen and they will happily take care of them for you.

If you decide to keep them over winter, you will find that they are hardy birds. They need very little just a house to get out of the weather, food, and water. We're in a cold climate here in Canada and we get a lot of winds so we do set up windbreak areas for our birds through the cold long months.