Renewable down standard

So it is possible to get down from duck and geese without killing them, or raising them in bad conditions like force feeding for foix gras

Is the good down also just as good fill power I wonder? North Face initially has it in their high end line so it must be just as good.

I want to say I saw something about another standard for down somewhere (the word "blue" may have been in it).

Can't recall. Anyone know what I might be thinking of?

I don't know if they cover down, but this is probably what you were thinking of. I have encountered it more in Europe, but Patagonia seems to use it for some of their products as well.

Blue Sign System
http://www.bluesign.com/

> So it is possible to get down from duck and geese without killing them,
Of course.
Look up Polish down farms or similar. The older the birds, the better the down. 15 year old birds in some cases. That is how it was always done in Eastern Europe, for hundreds of years, until the Chinese started collecting down almost for free from the duck-meat industry.

This is not meant as a criticism of Chinese down, just as an observation on economic reality.

Cheers

Speaking as someone who eats a mostly vegetarian diet, i would prefer the ducks and geese to be killed first and plucked later, than some of the practices of live plucking that particularly China has been known for, and i think some Polish and/or Hungarian farms also got caught doing (less common than the Chinese though). Some say these practices are being phased out due to consumer pressure and scrutiny, some say it still happens because there's a lot of secrecy/greed/looking the other way involved.

But if they are collecting it without causing significant pain to the birds, sounds fine to me and yes better than killing them for food right away.

I know it's not as good as the higher quality downs, but i'm curious how higher quality Angora Rabbit fiber stacks up to lower quality down. A bit less compressible for sure, but maybe equally or near equally warm? I assume this for a few reasons. One, kapok is nearly as insulating as low quality down, and yet kapok has significantly larger fibers than high quality angora fur, and is definitely less compressible than same (i've handled both). I'm particularly interested in sometime mixing some higher quality angora rabbit fur with some polypropylene microfiber to see what happens (the Angora for the structure/loft, and the polypropylene microfiber for the very light weight and more compressible insulation). In any case, even lower quality down will most likely be significantly more durable long term.

When done ethically, the down from birds on Eastern European 'down farms' is collected at the peak of the moult, when the birds are shedding all the old down. It almost falls off. Is it still done this way? iI don't know.

Cheers

I had a pair of tamed Canada geese that would allow me to pull down from them in spring, when they no longer needed it. They didn't mind in the least. I used to think of it like washing dead skin off. 'Corse, I only got a few handfulls per year.