How many geese?

[Chase]

How many geese does it take to fill a nice 600 or 800 fill jacket? What about sleeping bags of various temperature ratings?

Just curious, not asking for any reason besides that.

[Koda]

according to Feathered Friends a jacket "may" have a fill weight of 9 ounces of down, regardless of fill power (600 or 800).

http://featheredfriends.com/down/

I'd also like to know how many ounces a goose puts out

[texasbb]

I know nothing about this, but that's a good reason to speculate I suppose. I'd guess the answer is not simple. While it may take N geese to supply enough 800-fill down for one jacket, those N geese probably also contribute to some 700- and 600-fill garments and maybe a pillow or comforter.

[kaltbluter]

"Any goose that was over a year old yielded about an ounce of down just from under their wings. An ounce is enough to fill up a quart sized ziplock bag"

So, if you have a jacket that weighs 14oz it would require donations from, at most, a dozen or so geese.

Oh, and your down jacket is evil.

[Koda]

"Any goose that was over a year old yielded about an ounce of down just from under their wings. An ounce is enough to fill up a quart sized ziplock bag"

So, if you have a jacket that weighs 14oz it would require donations from, at most, a dozen or so geese.

Oh, and your down jacket is evil.

ouch...

as a juxtapose, I wonder how environmentally polluting synthetic products are?

[kaltbluter]

ouch...
as a juxtapose, I wonder how environmentally polluting synthetic products are?

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't feel all morally superior becuase I have a primaloft jacket. It was probably sewn together by abused women and children anyway.

Besides, I sleep under a down comforter, the piteous shrieks of two hundred denuded geese keeps me warm at night.

[Bosterson]

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't feel all morally superior becuase I have a primaloft jacket. It was probably sewn together by abused women and children anyway.

This is true of basically all clothing you can buy, though. Unless you're getting something from a local/cottage shop (CiloGear, NW Alpine, etc), everything is being sewn in large factories overseas. Some companies likely do what they can to ensure better working conditions (eg, not indentured servitude, actual bathroom breaks, pay, etc.), but this doesn't change that the reason things are made overseas is that the labor is much, much cheaper. (And also, we don't have the factories over here to make fancy things anymore.) In the Retraction episode of This American Life, regarding the reality of Mike Daisey's description of Apple factories, the NYT journalist covering Apple's factories put it really well that this isn't a black and white issue, but we enshrined all these labor principles a hundred years ago that we basically have not exported overseas to the places where all of our stuff is made nowadays.

Anyway, down or synthetic, someone not being paid a lot of money probably sewed it regardless.

As far as I can tell - and there may be more of these - there are 2 "certified" down suppliers: Patagonia's Traceable Down, and DownTek, which is 3rd party certified by Responsible Down. If you're going to get down, it seems like those are good ways to go. Unfortunately, it seems like a few companies (eg, BD) are using that Primaloft "down blend," which in addition to not specifying what fill power they're using, also doesn't seem to have any kind of brand or certification for the down itself. Definitely caveat emptor regarding down.

Ditto for Koda's question about synthetic products: basically everything we wear outdoors is made of oil. In addition to all the tiny bits of plastic that are shed during production (and every time you wash a synthetic product), I wonder what other kinds of solvents and stuff are used in the manufacturing process. (Is a DWR basically Teflon? They stopped using PFOA but instead use something else that's practically identical.)

And that doesn't even go into the issue of oil extraction itself...

[viking]

Thanks you guys, this thread is so uplifting!
But on the bright side my circa 1974 Camp 7 down coat still has life to it!

[Koda]

I thought I would resurrect this thread when I ran into an article today that is related to this discussion....

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-foul-trut ... omforters/

The article exposes the truth behind live plucked down vs the “Responsible Down Standard” (RDS) that mandates the feathers are non live-plucked (which makes them part of the food industry). The interesting part is the article describes live-plucked down being way more valuable than dead-plucked down however the live-plucked down is “too compressable” for the outdoor industry… such as down sleeping bags. I didn’t know that a mountaineering bag or item could be “too compressable”… but some might take comfort knowing their down gear is a byproduct of the food industry vs live torture...

There is a really graphic video of the live plucking process embedded in the article. It gives some perspective to the

piteous shrieks of two hundred denuded geese keeps me warm at night.