Goose dies, what to do?

[illabelle]

Until this morning I had a pair of white geese, two years old. This morning I went out to do my chores, and the female had died. There were no visible injuries, no blood, no ruffled feathers. For now she's in a bag in the freezer.
I've never made anything with goose down. Not sure how much down you get from one goose, or how hard it is to handle the down without it flying everywhere.
What should I consider making?
I've got down jackets already.
A vest maybe?

[zelph]

Collect the down first and then depending how much you get we will make a suggestion of what to make.

[VeganHiker]

Bury her and use non animal products.

[Hosh]

Ditch the bird and use some petroleum derived products.

[Gambit McCrae]

Funny how people are telling ya what to do with your goose, not how to process it.

Disclaimer: I have never done anything like this(strip a goose of down, process it and produce a product with the results) but I expect a compensation for my process engineering application plus design and development operations.

Firstly I would say its safe to say that the yield of down vs total feathers of the bird is not a 100% return. but the goose will have to be plucked and they may require a process of releasing the feathers from the body. I know people either put chickens in scalding water, or they boil the chicken? I don't think they boil the chicken, then you would have a cooked bird before its even plucked lol so we will go with dunking it in scalding water for....1 minute

There also may be a down treatment application you want to research, I could see needing to treat the down and probably washing the down prior to drying. I would probably attempt to wash it and treat it if necessary in some sort of large waterproof plastic bag, that way your solutions stay in with the down and it will be easy to collect all your wet down off the smooth walls of the bag when done.

Now that we have a heap of feather we gotta dry them. I just made this next part up but when applying it to granulated polymer pre injection molding process's, it makes sense.

Your going to want to get yourself a tube, aprox 4-6" diameter and I would say 2 ft tall, preferably clear for viewing. Your gunna want to cap both ends to be downsized to say a 1.5" opening in both ends, and get yourself a couple live well screens to overlay your 2 1.5" openings. Now stick some feathers in there, I would say fill your tube to be 1/3 full. Your gunna need some air flow now, propulsion. Like a shop vac that the hose can be put on an output vs a suck. now stick that hose up against either of your openings and let it run. At first the feathers are not going to do anything, this process will take time. once the feathers start to dry, they should start to move around in the canister more. If you notice the air flow has just created a path around the feathers you will want to shake your tube as often as it takes until they are free flowing around.

The alternate to this that I thought of after typing the above is to take all your wet feathers, put them in a pillow case. Put the opening of the pillowcase around your shop vac hose and with a large hose clamp, clamp it off so no feathers can come out, and the hose stays around the pillow case. Shake accordingly till dry.

Another alternate may be using that pillowcase full of feathers, zip tied shut and put in the dryer on low heat. I don't know what regular dryer heat would do to the integrity of the insulation properties.

I think the latter may be quicker, may require a second or third round using a dry pillow case each time. As well your gunna have to pick those feathers off the inside of the pillowcase(each round you have to do) where as the tube would be quite quick to clean out but will require more modification time on the front end.

Now that our feathers are dry we need to sort out the down from the non insulating, "wing" type feathers. Now I know we didn't pluck the wing feathers themselves but I am sure some larger feathers will make their way thru the drying process and will need to be discarded.

Now we come to a testing roadblock that you can determine how necessary it is. We need to measure the density, or loft...what we consider the ratings of 850 or 950 most often. We need to do this to determine if we have dried the down appropriately. There are loft tests on YouTube. Basically you fill a tube up with down, put a weight on top of it, and measure how much it compressed. Once you have your loft rating, you can lookup what a certain volume of that loft is suppose to weigh. You can weigh your loft and compare to the provided weight for that loft and I would say if your within +/- 10% of the standard than you did a pretty good job drying.

I would also say it is realistic to just dry the feathers until they look dry and floaty like the down that comes out of our expensive gear

Lastly is your packing process from your bulk supply of down, into your garment. Now Tipi Walter has a great deal of experience with down repair and possibly down garment fabrication. Hopefully he will stop by and debunk all of the above LOL but I would say you need something similar to a piping bag for cakes, but with an opening large enough to allow the down the transfer thru.

Now that I have said all of this. The googles says you need 12 geese to make 1 down jacket.

Down Vs Feather:


DIY Down plucking


Down drying

[HankIV]

Ditch the bird and use some petroleum derived products.

Petroleum is an animal product

[One Half]

Petroleum is an animal product

no it's not

[illabelle]

Gambit, you're hired!
Thank you for the impressively detailed write-up. I also posted my question in a FB homesteading group, but there hasn't been much response so far. To be honest, my post here was mostly just looking for ideas on what to make that might benefit a backpacker. There are non-backpacking ideas to explore also, like a comforter for an infant. The how part will require some research elsewhere.

Others,
As to whether petroleum is an animal product or not, I believe it is a "fossil fuel" and fossils come from long-dead microorganisms, plants, and animals. So I think an argument can be made that petroleum is derived from animals, but on the other hand, it isn't a byproduct of killing an animal. While I'm not vegan, I am a life-long vegetarian, and I do care about animals and how they're treated. I don't mind killing mosquitoes though.

[Hosh]

I can hear carrots screaming.
Something has to die for something to live, whether it’s composed plants for fertilizer or whacking an elk in the shoulder with a bullet.
Veganism is basically salad lovers looking for attention

[illabelle]

According to Gambit's research it takes about 6 geese to make a jacket. So one goose ought to make a sleeve, maybe a sleeve and a half. Not a great idea. Oh well.

[HankIV]

no it's not

Uhhh are you a saurophobe? Dino’s died for Dynemma.

[HankIV]

I can hear carrots screaming.
Something has to die for something to live, whether it’s composed plants for fertilizer or whacking an elk in the shoulder with a bullet.
Veganism is basically salad lovers looking for attention

For the record, despite my frivolous reply, I am mostly vegan myself. And I don’t need any attention. I just do it because I think it’s better for the planet to curb that sort of consumption

[Hosh]

For the record, despite my frivolous reply, I am mostly vegan myself. And I don’t need any attention. I just do it because I think it’s better for the planet to curb that sort of consumption

Hence you don’t use the word “vegan” in your pseudonym. Eating close to dirt is a good idea. Having your food preferences define a political agenda and using it to “convert” others by being in their face and disrupting their lives is obnoxious.

[ocourse]

Until this morning I had a pair of white geese, two years old. This morning I went out to do my chores, and the female had died. There were no visible injuries, no blood, no ruffled feathers. For now she's in a bag in the freezer.
I've never made anything with goose down. Not sure how much down you get from one goose, or how hard it is to handle the down without it flying everywhere.
What should I consider making?
I've got down jackets already.
A vest maybe?

How about making a beanie?

[VeganHiker]

I can hear carrots screaming.
Something has to die for something to live, whether it’s composed plants for fertilizer or whacking an elk in the shoulder with a bullet.
Veganism is basically salad lovers looking for attention

Veganism is people taking a look at the cruel reality of the unnecessary mistreatment of animals and saying- lets find better options. What your statements attempt to do is stop yourself from acknowleding that you personally, and society have better options than the massive abuse and torture of animals.

[CalebJ]

Veganism is people taking a look at the cruel reality of the unnecessary mistreatment of animals and saying- lets find better options. What your statements attempt to do is stop yourself from acknowleding that you personally, and society have better options than the massive abuse and torture of animals.

Why do you feel like you've been given a platform to air your beliefs and that we owe you a listening ear?

[illabelle]

How about making a beanie?

Not a bad choice. And if there's enough down, I could make a matching pair. I kinda like this idea.

[VeganHiker]

Why do you feel like you've been given a platform to air your beliefs and that we owe you a listening ear?

Why do you feell like you've been given a platform to air your beliefs and we owe you a listening ear?

[zelph]

Not a bad choice. And if there's enough down, I could make a matching pair. I kinda like this idea.

I like it!!! Make matching beanies

[CalebJ]

Why do you feell like you've been given a platform to air your beliefs and we owe you a listening ear?

Maybe this is confusing to you...

I didn't enter this thread to lecture the OP (twice) that what they needed wasn't an answer to their question, but to change their belief system about how animals should be treated.

I appreciate that you have an opinion on the matter. But you don't seem to understand that there's a time and place to have a conversation about something like this, and someone else's thread really isn't the place to do so.