Polish Mother Goose Down Explained: Grades, Loft And Proof

What the mother goose name covers

Polish mother goose down, explained without the marketing language, names a particular down rather than a quality grade that any standard defines. The down we sell under the name is breast down from Polish geese, sorted by hand so only the largest clusters are kept. The grade is the classification printed beside it, Class 1 or Class 1A, and the numbers that decide what you are buying are the down percentage and the fill power.

So on its own the phrase tells you about the bird, not about loft. That matters when you compare two quilts: one can carry the words and the other can carry the test figures, and only one of those is checkable. Everything we fill is goose or duck down, so if you're after wool, bamboo or a synthetic, we aren't the right shop for you.

Where this down actually comes from

The down we buy under this name comes from one Polish breed, collected from one part of the bird, and sorted by hand. Our supplier, Cedrob, collects down from each part of the goose separately, so breast clusters are never blended back in with the rest.

Polish mother goose down comes from the White Koluda goose, a government regulated supply where breeding eggs must be purchased from the Polish state breeding programme. Flocks sit on family farms averaging 3,000 to 6,000 birds, while other countries are dominated by farms running flocks more than ten times bigger. That is the provenance behind the name.

What we can put numbers to is what reaches our bench: our mother goose lots are hand selected for the largest clusters only, carry a turbidity of 1000, the point at which it does not get any cleaner, and contain less than roughly 0.01% light brown down.

The numbers that sit behind the name

Buyers who want Polish mother goose down explained in terms they can check should start with the law rather than the label. Under the Australian Consumer Law, which the ACCC administers and enforces, a down-content claim on a quilt is a representation about the composition and quality of goods, and the law prohibits false or misleading representations about goods. The ACCC has acted against quilt suppliers whose labelled down content did not match the product, in one case quilts sold as 100% goose down testing at 50 to 55% goose down, and reliance on the labelling tolerances in the AS 2479 edition of the day did not excuse the gap. AS 2479, published by Standards Australia, is the standard setting the purity, composition, classification and labelling requirements for down and feather filling materials and filled products, and it does not define "mother goose".

The substantiation the ACCC has taken undertakings on for a down-percentage claim is testing of the finished product by an International Down and Feather Bureau accredited testing organisation, so that's the fair question to put to any seller, alongside the percentage and fill power the quilt is sold as. On fill power, the International Down and Feather Laboratory's guidance is that an advertised figure should hold within 5% of the measured figure on the finished product after proper conditioning. Certification answers a different question again: per Textile Exchange, the Responsible Down Standard covers animal welfare and traceability from farm to product, and says nothing about down percentage, fill power or origin. Our own paperwork is narrower and more concrete: we import our down and cases by the container, and we will always provide the Veterinary Health Certificates covering a shipment, which show the down free of avian flu and sterilised to strict Australian standards. For the grade-by-grade comparison, we've written up how Polish goose down compares to other downs separately.

Matching loft to an Australian bedroom

Fill power tells you how much loft a given weight of down returns, not how warm the finished quilt will be in your room, and a quilt built for a European winter will cook most Australian sleepers. Because a 900 fill power cluster needs less filling to reach the same loft, our mother goose quilts feel lighter in the hand at a given blanket warmth, which is why we'd have you choose the warmth number for your room first and the down grade second.

• Heated bedroom, or a humid northern winter: 1 to 3 blanket warmth, such as the Queen Mother Goose, 3 Blanket Warmth.

• An average insulated room in a temperate city: 4 to 5 blanket warmth, the middle of the range.

• Unheated, elevated or a cold old house: 6 to 7 blanket warmth. On a wider bed that's the King Mother Goose, 7 Blanket Warmth, where a top-end goose down quilt earns its keep.

Caught between two numbers? Tell us how the room sleeps in July and we'll pick one for you, just Contact Us.

Construction and casing hold the loft up

High fill power stuffed into a shallow, sewn-through quilt gives most of its advantage back, because the stitch line pinches the down flat exactly where your shoulder meets the quilt. The construction and the casing are the two things that let a good cluster do its work.

Most of our range is baffle boxed, with fabric walls between the top and bottom layers so each box can fill to its full depth right to the edge. Channel construction runs the down in long chambers instead, which suits anyone who likes to shake the loft up towards their shoulders. A walled channel quilt such as the Queen Walled Channel Mother Goose, 4 Blanket Warmth gives you that movement without losing wall height. For the casing we use German Batiste from Weidmann, TE100 or the finer 380 thread count TE270.

Lifespan, care and what it costs

We don't quote a single figure for mother goose down, because the cost moves with size, warmth number and down grade across the range, and the honest comparison is cost per year rather than cost. A premium European goose down quilt will comfortably last between 10 and 15 years with basic maintenance, which is the arithmetic worth doing before you choose a grade.

Maintenance is mostly airing and shaking. Quilts and mattress toppers want washing only every three to five years, and pillows every six to twelve months, as our care instructions set out. In humid coastal and northern homes, air the quilt more often instead of washing it more often. If you want the same down under your head, our goose down pillows run soft through to firm, and the King Medium-Firm Mother Goose Pillow uses it at the same 900 fill power.