Sunday, February 22, 2009

Read my beak, Bella Vista: Don't oil my eggs, don't shoot my goslings

Please click on image of face of Canada goose to Enlarge and read her bill.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Contemplate what we do to chickens en masse and see how sorry you can feel about the relatively humane oiling of eggs laid by free outdoor birds.

February 23, 2009 at 9:57 AM
aubunique said...

I often have said over several decades that everyone who eats meat should kill and dress the birds for cooking rather than support the mass-growing of birds and mammals for market. Oiling eggs rather eating them is counter to a sustainable lifestyle.
Shooting the geese on these lakes where no hunting is allowed would violate all the principles of ethical hunting.
If the lakes were opened to licensed hunters during the annual seasons on specific species of waterfowl, then hunters could use the time-tested methods of hunting to harvest some every year.
But waterfowl on these lakes are fed by people who do appreciate watching them there, which means that these birds are "baited." Baiting fields or waterways to attract waterfowl for hunting is illegal.
Hunting and fishing can give a person a sense of the reality of what means to be a predator. Human beings have domesticated animals for food since before Noah's flood. But only in the 20th century did that process deteriorate from the family farm situation where the people who ate the eggs and drank milk and sometimes slaughtered fowl and mammals for food actually had a personal relationship with those animals and understood their dependence on those animals.
Domesticating the species of most interest to hunters in the long-ago past was a way to ensure having food year round.
Hunting wild things was always a risk. Animals migrated or weather conditions affected their reproductive ability unpredictably.
The very presence of these Canada geese is related to weather changes in the second half of the 20th century.
Canada geese stopped migrating all the way south to Arkansas as less snow cover prevented their feeding on abundant waste grain in the middle west. Enough rivers and streams flowed through most of the winter to allow waterfowl to find more food and water. Wildlife managers called this "short-stopping" waterfowl that historically migrated far south for winter and returned far north to reproduce.
So a native population of Canada geese was created by bringing eggs south and hatching them in central Arkansas and freeing them to populate the stay. The majority to do migrate north because they feel compelled to nest where they were born. And being large and powerful and having a stable family structure, Canada geese adapted and found reproduction possible in Arkansas. Natural predators such as coyotes and wolves are also discouraged from ranging through desirable goose habitat in populated areas, so, without hunting by humans, waterfowl easily increase in population in such areas.
But Canada geese are a wonderful resource for food as well as aesthetic reasons and have the same right to exist and prosper as human beings do. If times get tougher, more people will be trying to kill a few for food or capture and domesticate them for their eggs and meat. That is a natural process that allows the wild things to live as they always have.

February 23, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Anonymous said...

If oiling eggs is not sustainable.... maybe non-vegan people could gather all but a couple of the eggs from each clutch and cook them for breakfast??

I don’t see how hunting is any more sustainable than neutralizing the eggs somehow. What you say seems to me to be like saying that war is a sustainable alternative to birth control.

February 23, 2009 at 2:10 PM
Anonymous said...

Kill 'em all, and dump 'em in the White River.

February 23, 2009 at 5:28 PM

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