enty of drinking water be kept before the geese.
The feeding period where geese are noodled usually extends from 3 to 4
weeks. Gains of 6 to 10 pounds per bird can be secured and often an
increased price of 10 to 15 cents a pound can be secured for such
specially fattened geese. Noodled geese will average about 25 pounds and
some individuals have been made to weigh nearly 40 pounds. One man can
noodle from 50 to 100 geese but has to put in long hours. Noodled geese
should be dressed where fattened as they are soft fleshed and would
shrink badly if shipped alive.
Fattening methods similar to the noodling described are used in parts
of Europe for the production of the enlarged goose livers which are
employed in making "patte de fois gras".

Methods Used on Fattening Farms
As previously mentioned, a few farmers make a specialty of buying the
geese in their section of the country in the fall when it is too late
for serious trouble to develop from hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease
similar to fowl cholera, and to fatten or finish them in large flocks
for the Thanksgiving and Christmas markets. Methods are employed in
different sections which differ quite widely.
On a farm in the Middle West the geese are collected from the general
farms where they are produced in small flocks and brought to the farm
where they are kept in flocks as large as 1,000 or even more, and are
allowed to run in a cornfield or orchard. They are fattened for about a
month. Corn on the cob and plenty of water is kept before the geese all
the time and if they are running in a cornfield they eat the leaves off
the corn stalks for roughage. Roughage is supplied if not available
otherwise and straw, hay or vegetables are utilized for this purpose.
No shelter is provided during mild weather, the geese getting such
protection as they can from the trees or corn stalks. If the weather
turns unusually severe, the geese are generally driven into sheds or
barns. When fattened the geese are usually shipped to some large market
alive. Several farms in the neighborhood of Boston make a specialty of
finishing geese each fall, and the methods used are quite different from
those described above. No geese are raised on these farms, the operation
being confined to the fattening or finishing of the geese and to killing
and dressing them for the market. Some of these goose fatteners also
have stalls or stands in the Boston markets where they are enabled to
dispose of their fattened geese to the best advan