I mentioned in my last post that we had our first gosling and were hoping for the other two to hatch in the next few days. We also had 4 new eggs appear in the nest.
Unfortunately when Sam next checked one egg was sitting outside of the nest. We thought it might be a dead egg so I went to collect it for candling. It had gone and we assumed that the goose had taken it back under her. We waited and waited but no other goslings appeared.
Then we went out a few days after the expected hatch day and saw all of the geese out with the gosling. I approached the nest but there was no reaction from the geese. A bit of digging revealed 4 eggs but no markings on any of them. The other two eggs that I had set were gone. We can only assume that they weren’t viable and the geese got rid of them. Where to though I have no idea, we searched the area top and bottom but no signs, not even any shells.
April looked quite awful but later that day she was sitting again on the eggs. As far as I could work out the new eggs were just over a week old by this point, we couldn’t let her sit for 4 more weeks, she was losing the energy to even threaten me when I approached the nest. The decision was made and we took the eggs away.
We have an incubator that we bought as a back up in case any chickens got bored of sitting halfway through a brood, it made no mention of goose eggs though and looks quite small. We decided to risk it and try and fit in as many of the eggs as we could. We were very happy to discover that we can in fact get 4 goose eggs into a Brinsea Mini Eco!
There are no instructions with the incubator for goose eggs, no automatic turner and no way to monitor humidity so we are absolutely winging it here, but we wanted to give the 4 eggs a chance. We are trying to turn them 4 times a day and going with the instructions for chickens on humidity. We candled the eggs last night and saw movement in 3 of them, the 4th one doesn’t look promising but I’ll check again in a few days. I’ve no idea if this hatch will be successful but it’s worth a try.
If anyone has tips on hatching goose eggs in an incubator I’d be very welcome of them!
On an even better news front, our first gosling is doing well. It wanders around with its 4 bodyguards. I was worried about the crows getting to it, but it is one well protected gosling!
Dans
