Quality genetics give geese competitive edge

If you were looking for something that epitomised the way consumers have returned in droves to relish traditional food and hankered after poultrymeat with real flavour, you need look no further than the goose.

And in the past few weeks before Christmas there can be few places better to prove how festive eating trends are changing than in the fields around David Lea’s Tower View Farm, Ormskirk, Lancashire.

It is here that 1000 mature white table geese will be gaining their last few pounds of succulent and flavoursome flesh eating qualities that are responsible for the surge in popularity of goose at Christmas.

Challenge

When Mr Lea and his late father Norman decided to set up Lancashire Geese more than 15 years ago, some might have said they were brave to start a venture in the days when the turkey seemed unassailable as the most favoured Christmas fowl.

But the Lea partnership had vision and perfect timing. After spending decades in the doldrums with a reputation for being “fatty”, the modern table goose was poised to challenge the turkey’s festive dominance head on.

And while turkey producers had to act quickly and turn increasingly to non-white feathered birds reared either on range or organically to provide consumers with more flavour, the goose had flavour to spare and had a “natural” image to go with it.

One of the original reasons for setting up Lancashire Geese was to provide a supply of goslings of consistent quality to other farmers and poultry keepers who wanted to rear birds for the Christmas market.

Back in the early 1990s, farmers found it difficult to source well-bred table goslings in numbers of, say, 50-200 to enable them to meet all their Christmas orders from birds of the same age reared as one batch.

Lancashire Geese still supplies thousands of goslings to individual rearers in spring and early summer, but also finishes 1000 geese for its own Christmas customers.

There are 900 birds in the farm’s breeding flock. Both breeding stock and finishing birds are run on grassland, but always have access to large wooden buildings with strawed floors. All birds are locked up at night to avoid predation.

“Birds are fed on ad-lib wheat throughout the year, although a high-protein breeder ration is introduced in early spring and maintained until May, when birds stop laying,” says Mr Lea.

The breeding ratio is four geese to one gander. Geese, which lay from February to June, are happy to use car tyres stuffed with straw, which are provided as makeshift nests inside the buildings. Each goose lays 40-50 eggs and will maintain that output for about six years with fertility at about 60%.

Incubation

Lancashire Geese has specialist incubation facilities and several years ago invested £150,000 in an incubator designed solely for goose eggs. Eggs are washed by hand after collection and stored in a cooler that maintains them at a temperature of 8C.

Offering batches of day-old goslings from birds with proven performance on growth-rate continues to be one of the business’s strengths. Over the years, the Lea family has developed and continually improved its own strain of table goose, which is renowned for its high meat-to-bone ratio. Breeding was originally based on Danish genetics.

“We’ve got the genetics for growth, but it is important to match that with correct diet all year round. Although our birds have day-time access to grazing, there is always grain available in the hoppers. As well as feeding the breeder ration in the spring, we switch to a finisher diet in the last eight weeks before Christmas when birds are gaining most weight,” says Mr Lea.

He says families who try roast goose at Christmas become regular customers. But like his late father, he is adamant that he will not try to produce a “leaner” goose.

“Geese carry more fat than other poultry it’s not excessive, but it’s the fat on a goose that gives it its distinct and succulent flavour. In fact, goose fat is now establishing its own market as being ideal for roasting and basting. Pound-for- pound, the goose fat is actually worth more than the goose itself,” adds Mr Lea.

GEESE REARING

• High-protein finishing diet
• Constantly improving genetics
• High meat-to-bone ratio