I also bought the Ashton book.
New to keeping geese, we ended up with two geese and a gander in Feb at coming up to 1 year old. The eggs are lovely! We just had our last fried goose egg of the year and I am looking forward to tucking into them again come Feb.
Our geese were not friendly at all but we found walking with a stick, wearing wellies for a bit of calf protection and maybe a dustpan lid when you are collecting eggs worked fine. An occassional raised boot can deter them too.
As Caroline said they are really messy. We had our 3 in a 0.10acre fenced area, there were some conifer trees for shelter and we put in a shed. They didn't use the shed but it gave us somewhere to put the layers pellets and grit for them. In that area I have to admit I poo picked the worst areas for toileting, they seem to somewhat have favourite spots.
We provided ours with a builders bucket of fresh water twice a day so they can clean their eyes and a paddling pool which is changed every couple of days and moved so they can have a splash. While they were laying we gave layers pellets and when the nights were cooler we gave a few handfuls of corn each bird each night in their drinking water.
I did try worming them with the Flubenvet pellets, but I don't think they had a full dose.
Oh they are noisy, we found this off putting, thinking they were being aggressive all the time but we learnt the difference in the calls and body language. Most of the time they are just saying hello so I honk back at them.
Ours aren't in a fox proof area but neither are our chickens, nor were they before when we got them from the old neighbour. There doesn't seem to be a fox issue and I'm hoping it stays that way.
Can't think of anything else. We are still new and probably still have a lot to learn but so far I have to say I am glad we have the geese.
Oh if you are wanting to sell the eggs then give some good thought to how to keep them clean. Ours wouldn't lay in the shed we got them. They made their nests outside in hedgerows and under low trees. As such the eggs got very dirty and I didn't feel comfortable selling them other than to friends and family. Next year I will be looking at making decent sized nest boxes that I can put wherever they choose to nest or maybe waterproof fabric under the nest. We did wash the eggs to start with but then read that that can make bacterial contamination more likely.
Dans