Humans have domesticated geese for millennia, going back to ancient Mesopotamia about 3,000 BCE ago. Today, geese may be rediscovered for regenerative farming. At Persephone Market Garden, we have discovered the benefits of geese for regenerative grazing!

Full disclosure – my personal “thing with geese” is mainly culinary. In my opinion, geese are the tastiest of all poultry. In my German heritage, geese are the traditional Christmas bird – just thinking of the flavour of crispy skin makes my mouth water. In my opinion, they beat out chicken, turkey and duck – but taste preferences are personal. Yet, this blog is about another reasons why we should look into the goose as a culinary delight.

Geese may be an important tool for ecological farming – they address a few important challenges in producing food regeneratively. Yet, geese are currently not widely utilized in North America – is that an opportunity missed? This blog explains why.

What makes for regenerative livestock?

Criterion 1: Minimize grain feeding. Grain feed competes with human food production and uses more than a third of farmland for annual monoculture crops. In fact, around 67% of all grain grown in North America is fed to animals (source)! Chicken, ducks and pigs take up most of their nutrients from grain feed, even if pastured. Ruminants like cattle or sheep can feed entirely on grass, with the exception of some modern high-bred varieties that rely on extra feed (this makes up almost all feedlot breeds!). Geese only require a little grain for fattening. Unlike any other poultry, geese can mostly eat grass, deriving about 9 out of 10 calories from pasturing, plus some more grain for fattening in the last weeks. Farmers produce these feed grains in annual monocultures, in North America mostly using seed coating with neonicotinoids that make the area toxic for all insects and birds, and herbicides like roundup that eradicate all other plants and most soil microbes. This compromises soil health, reduces biodiversity, and removes habitat and other ecosystem functions from our land. Given the massive environmental footprint of feed production, wouldn’t it be nice to reduce our dependence on annual feed crops? And geese offer just a solution here – geese can be grown outdoors on pasture – by moving them regularly, geese get, in total, 80% of their diet from eating grass!

Criterion 2: Reduce winter feeding. For grazing, Ontario’s climate offers two main seasons: Grazing season when animals are on pasture (May to November) and snow season when animals are fed, usually in the barn (December to April). To feed animals through Ontario’s long winter, farmers need to keep a significant area of land in hayfields, usually using fertilizer and regular ploughing. This is costly financially and also not optimal for soil health and biodiversity (in some regions, manure from feedlot farming is available for hayfield fertilization!). This is why ecological farmers do best with animal systems that have large volume of animal biomass in summer, and a small volume of animal biomass in winter – optimally up to the capacity of the pastures.

To increase animal biomass rapidly in spring and reduce it again in late fall, ecological farmers need animals that grow to butchering weight within one season and has as many “spring offsprings” as possible. Animals that meet these specifications include sheep (depending on breed one to four lambs, with 5-8 month until butchering), chicken or ducks (purchased as day-olds in spring/summer and 6-10 weeks until butchering), pigs (~10 piglets in spring and 6 months until butchering), rabbits (many offsprings whenever needed, 6-8 weeks to butchering) or geese and turkeys (12 weeks until butchering). Pigs, chicken and ducks, and turkey, however, require feeding with grain while ruminants, geese and rabbits mostly eat grass and cover crops (Criterion 1). Each female goose lays around 50 eggs per season that, if incubated, can bring forth around 25 goslings that mature by the end of the season. This is a lot of new animal mass!

Criterion 3: Regenerative pasture impacts. Regenerative pasture impact is necessary to improve biodiversity and abundance on pastures. Next to the choice of animals that are not in direct conflict with human food consumption, small-scale grazers face one specific problem that I will elaborate deeper in this blog: creating regenerative impact on pastures.

With these criteria, not all animals make sense in a regenerative management context. But geese may just do the trick for small farms – and this blog explains why.

Why small-scale regenerative grazing? – An introduction

For those whose knowledge on regenerative livestock and regenerative grazing needs a refresher, please continue to read this section (or read from Savory Institute on the larger management context!). Others may skip ahead  to “Animal Impacts”!

The best way to understand grazing is thus to understand how animals are essential to maintaining vigorous grasslands. Nature’s own method once had been huge ruminant herds that were crowded together by predators. Animals will indistinctly eat down everything that they can reach: with the density of the herd, each sheep knows that whatever it does not eat herself, another sheep will eat immediately. So no time to be choosy! This way, nature ensures that meadows and grasslands rejuvenate and maintain biodiversity at the same time.

Grassland ecoregions – While animals play an essential part in maintaining all grassland ecosystems, their specific role varies in different ecoregions. So climatic context defines the specific ecological role of grazing animals.

Generally, grasslands are ecoregions characterized by long dry periods. During these periods, water is so scarce that forest ecosystems cannot be sustained. In these dry grasslands, tree plantings cannot succeed in the long run, even if individual trees could be planted and irrigated until tree roots enable an individual tree’s survival. The tree community is not resilient over time – forests would inevitably dry out and burn down in natural wildfires.

There are four classes of grassland ecologies: short-grass prairies, long-grass prairies, Savannah ecosystems, and the human-made temperate mosaic landscapes:

• Semi-arid shortgrass prairies are dominate much of the southern prairies. Water is always a limiting growth factor and relatively long periods have no growth at all. This ecoregion is especially prone to desertification, whether due to overgrazing or lack of grazing!
• Long-grass prairies are home to some of the fastest growing plants of the planet, such as corn, switchgrass(Panicum virgatum), and indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans). During much of the growing season, water is not a limiting factor in growth.
• Savannah ecoregions offer an intermediary ecology between dry grasslands and forests: there’s enough moisture available to ensure the survival of individual trees, but there are too many wildfires to support dense forests. Hence, Savannah ecosystems are characterized by dispersed individual (usually large) trees that have fire-resistant barks, such as oaks and hickories.
• Mosaic landscapes are human-made landscapes that combine forests, wetlands, meadows, and tree lines. The New England States and much of Ontario was once managed for this landscape category, driven by relatively small farm scales and mixed livestock-crop farming. In these landscapes, tree lines and diverse landscape features are valued for their localized ecosystem functions and services – water cycling, shade/sun protection, wind protection, moisture retention. The main ecosystem feature is the ecotone – the transitioning of one ecology to another. Due to these habitat “gradients”, mosaic landscapes can be among the most biodiverse ecoregions.

Grazing managers must take into consideration the specific requirements of each ecoregion. In particular, the role of animal impact differs, or how grazing animals physically alter the soil.

Degenerated or regenerated pastures?

You may have seen pastures that were grazed poorly and degenerated. Graziers know two reasons for pasture degeneration:

• Overgrazing means that animals are returning to an area before plants could recover the health of their root systems after previous grazing. The outcomes of overgrazing include shallow root layers, and the shift of the plant community towards the least palatable species while tasty, desirable species disappear.
• Over-resting is the opposite: plants are not grazed with sufficient frequency and pastures lack rejuvenation. While biodiversity is maintained for the lifetime of established grasses, the pasture degrades as plants age in the long run. When ruminants are removed in drylands, entire stretches can turn into desert due to over-resting!

Most agriculturally used pastures are not managed regeneratively. Graziers describe these as a third degradation state:

• Over-grazed & Over-rested. If agricultural pastures are not managed well, then palatable species are over-grazed while unpalatable species are over-rested. Have you ever seen pastures with very short grass cover, sprinkled with large thistle patches (“Golf course with thistles”)? Such pastures bring minimal economic benefits: short grasses have shallow root depth. Thus they cannot hold water or access nutrients and grow slowly. They produce little feed compared to healthy pastures with fully developed root systems! Meanwhile, more and more pasture is covered with economically useless unpalatable species that age, dry out and tie up nutrients. Such pastures can only support a fraction of the animals than they could in a healthy state! This happens if animals are not moved out of a pasture often enough (over-grazing) and animal numbers are insufficient so they don’t have to eat everything (over-resting). Continuous grazing – the permanent confinement of animals into a fixed area – almost inevitably has this outcome. To avoid this form of degradation, farmers either plow/fertilize/reseed pastures regularly – or use regenerative grazing management.

In Ontario, over-resting is less of a problem than in drylands. Our winters bring enough snow to pack down all biomass, thus allowing rot and decomposition. During winter, capping is also reversed by the digging action of earth worms, if the soil is healthy enough. Still, the rejuvenation aspect of young plant growth is lacking.

Ranches with large herds can use rotational grazing to crowd together many animals on small space, thus mimicking the animal impact of large wild herds. This avoids over-grazing and over-resting. Unfortunately, on small-scale farms, farmers cannot recreate the animal impact of large herds easily. So small farms often miss out on the regenerative impact of well-managed grazing. Geese, however, may prove helpful here at least in temperate areas with limited capping – with their large feet, they indiscriminately trample down everything. And they eat almost everything!

Animal impact

At small scale, regenerative grazing is difficult. Some grassland rejuvenation processes require short but strong disturbances followed by long rest. Nature does that with large herds and a high density of animals that eat indiscriminately, trample the soil, defecate, and move on. Such animal impact creates small areas of disturbances with bare soil, where seeds can sprout and rejuvenate the grassland. It also pads down standing grasses, allowing soil microbes to decompose them and allowing light to reach the ground – new plants can emerge.  Animal impact includes hoof traffic that cuts up the hardened soil surface, scratching from chicken that are looking for worms, rooting by pigs, or just dust bathing by donkeys or horses (some ground-nesting bees love the bare spots that this leaves!). If animal impact is too long and too severe, it can degrade soil – but if mimicking nature, animal impact enables life. It’s about the “how” – as always!

It is difficult to manage for beneficial animal impact with a small number of animals – regardless of the species. Horses, cows or sheep only have regenerative animal impact if they are moving in dense herds. Pigs are not impacting evenly, and often too strong – so appropriate animal impact remains the holy grail of small-scale regenerative grazing.

But what exactly is animal impact? To understand the role of animals, let’s begin by looking at undisturbed “nature” when large herds roamed freely over infinite grasslands, followed by pack predators that were always on the look for weak animals, or animals separated from the herd. The passing of a large herd over a meadow or grassland had four main impacts on vegetation and soil:

• Vegetation is evenly grazed, (almost) all species equally. This even pressure on all species prevents selection pressure on the most palatable species. Even thistles and other non-palatable plants will be eaten or trampled down. Once the herd passes and the meadow re-grows, all plants start with the same growing conditions. Biodiversity is maintained.
• The area is covered with manure. Manure is full of i) microbes that revitalize disturbed soil, ii) undigested seeds that find perfect germination conditions in the moist dung, iii) nutrients that feed the soil, and iv) especially in semi-arid grasslands, the urine offers moisture for seed germination!

Furthermore, animals don’t like re-grazing an area after it was contaminated with manure – herds instinctively avoid the pathogens and parasite that could endanger their health. Thus, herds will allow manure-covered meadows to rest until roots and plants fully recovered.

• Trampling and digestion of standing biomass. Animals trample down old stubbles and other standing biomass. Stubbles trap nutrients, foster wildfires, and shade out the ground in ways that prevent germination. If not trampled or burned, dry stubbles can remain on meadows for many years and also prevent rejuvenation. When trampled, a dense organic layer can suck up moisture, foster rot and other forms of decomposition, and support soil formation. In drylands, ruminants offer an additional function: they “compost” standing biomass in their moist rumen even if the soil is too dry for decomposition. This way, animals return nutrients to the mineral cycle. The moist dung offers perfect conditions for germination, especially if dung beetles bury balls that are perfectly sized to support seedling growth. If animals are removed, this biomass remains standing and promotes wildfires.
• The soil surface is strongly disturbed by animal feet/hoofs (“animal impact”). In the (semi-)arid regions with shortgrass prairies, and in temperate regions during the dry season, the top of the soil hardens. This “capping” suppresses the germination of new seeds and also inhibits water infiltration – rainfall quickly runs off and evaporates on capped soils, fostering drought. With capping, existing plant communities age and eventually die without regrowth! Especially short-grass prairies will turn into desert if animal impact does not disrupt the soil capping! Many dryland conservationists are struggling with this phenomenon, because the large herds that once roamed the prairies no longer exist. With their hoofs, these herds have cut through the soil capping and “micro-tilled” the top area of the soil. This brought old seeds to the surface and added new seeds in the manure –seeds sprout, new seedlings emerge, and the grasslands rejuvenate.

Some regenerative grazers achieve animal impact with large flocks of chicken. For example,

• Cages of meat birds can be pulled across a field. These meat birds feed on (purchased) grain that was grown in annual monocultures; the feed then becomes dung and fertilizes the pasture. Farmers face the challenge of marketing thousands of pastured chicken, and depend on annual crop as feed. And chicken are prone to predation by raptors, small and large predators…
• Other farmers integrate pastured pigs – again, mostly by feeding purchased grain. Pigs can be too tough on the soil, because they love rooting.

The reliance on feed grain is a disadvantage with chicken and pigs. So small farmers are continuously looking for better strategies for regenerative pasturing – in particular with good animal impact!

Our grazing experience – geese for silvopasture establishment and excellent animal impact

With this lengthy prelude, I would like to share a few images of grazing geese. Our son Oskar bred goslings in his incubator, or the adult moms incubated them with great success. Starting with 4 females and one gander, we ended up with about 30 animals We started grazing them at a bit less than one month of age, when the birds were sturdy enough to walk through high grass. We used regular poultry electric fencing, a solar fencer, a “goose house” for some shade, and a waterer that was always kept full from our 1000 litre cube tank.

Of course, we are in Grey County – and there was predation pressure. One time, we fenced our geese around the market garden in order to deter deer. It worked! The deer never returned after this chatter assault. However, a week later, we found our prime gander dead, tangled in the fence. The next night, all geese escaped and one was missing – we later found scat from a Bobcat. But otherwise, we had them on pasture all summer without any losses. Luck?

Our geese loved whenever they got new grass – it dramatically reduced their need for supplementary grain. When the area was eaten down, they became noisy and asked for grain!

As grazing animals, geese convinced us in two manners:

• Geese padded down grass evenly and totally. Even the dense 6-feet-high areas around our fruit trees were eventually flattened totally.
• Trees is the keyword. We have always struggled with grazing around our tree plantings: the trees are now higher than our tree guards, and our sheep would browse on them. The geese have no interest in trees or our hazelnuts – even without any tree guards. Even when the grass was significantly scarce, the trees and brushes had hardly any damage.

Especially the potential of geese for silvopasturing stuck out. I am not sure which species they would devour, so caution is required with each new species, each new growth stage of the leafs, and especially as the pastures are consumed. With sheep, we observed their browsing habits and preference for certain forbs (flowering plants) change based on their parasite load, and whether they had access to “medicinal herbs” with tannins and other active substances for some time. If saturated, they won’t touch certain herbs – if not, they devour them. So more work is needed to understand the variability of feeding preferences on geese as well. That said, our initial experience with grazing geese around young and developing trees, is very promising.

In 2024, we are planning to participate in an on-farm research project with the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, with the goal of providing quantitative numbers and turn our experience into a scientifically solid case study!

Before grazing

After grazing

Moving animals

Chicken are solitary animals that don’t flock together. Herding chicken is a pain – we rather catch them one by one, or use feed to lure them along. Geese are more pleasant to move – they flock together and move in bunches. Though they often separate into smaller groups with their unique flock hierarchies – there’s a limit to how many geese can be moved conveniently (Will Harris from White Oak Pastures struggles with moving his 2000 geese!). We have moved our geese throughout much of our property – where there’s grass, there can be geese. And our kids loved it!

They even liked a dip in our pond … whenever we passed by, they took a break.

The marketing challenge remains

Like so often, there are very ecological opportunities for producing abundance – simultaneously for us humans and for a biodiverse nature. On our farm, grazing geese could turn into a key technology: we can protect young tree saplings in an ecological manner, create animal impact that benefits pasture rejuvenation. All with low labour input while producing a phenomenal food: goose meat. Marketing geese can recover our grazing costs and thus offer a zero-chemical, zero-fuel strategy for raising trees and pasture regeneration.

However, it requires marketing. In North America, geese are not eaten at traditional feasts, and geese are certainly not a daily staple food. So ecological farming, once again, requires to shift the values of eaters. Who is interested in trying out geese instead of our traditional Christmas Turkey? We are taking pre-orders for the 2024/5 winter now!

Pricing of geese is relatively high. A pound generally goes for $12, and a 8lbs goose costs about $100. Also, geese are flavourful like other “gamy” poultry – they had a full life and moved around a lot. This means they need to be braised to render them tender, while grain-fed fast-growing turkey can be fried like a grain-fed fast-growing chicken breast. However, those who give their birds time ion the oven talk about the phenomenal flavour of geese that makes them a favourite bird for celebratory feasts in Europe.