My Pilgrim egg incubation saga.

[Isadora]

Thank you for posting all these videos and pictures! I just put four goose eggs into the incubator yesterday and I'm so excited. Your geese are all so beautiful.

 

[Poakahi808]

Hello! A question about nest structure (you got me on the part where you said "I realized the nest wasn’t as deep as it needed to be to keep all eggs insulated."

My two Pilgrim girls have laid eggs and made nests. One is nesting outside on the ground and she has been sitting for maybe a week give or take. She is actively sitting on 5 eggs and they are warm to touch. The other started her nest well before in an old dog house with a wooden floor. She has 9 eggs but she isn't sitting ON them although she is always in there, sitting. She is sitting with them around her in an organized half circle but they are cold to touch and not really under her. I think these girls may be around 5 years old and they have laid before, although I do not know if they ever hatched their own young.

My question is this, do their nests need to be deep and not just on a flat surface? I had put a lot of hay in the dog house originally but saw that some eggs would go missing somewhere below in all the hay so I removed a lot of it. The eggs are sitting on the wooden floor and their is hay mixed with down around them. Should i remove the dog house and have her make her nest on the actual ground outside or is there something I can add to the nest for the right depth???

 

[FoodFreedomNow]

I don't let my girls incubate their eggs, but they definitely prefer a deep nest to lay their eggs in. They'll dig a hole in the coop's bedding, lay their eggs, and cover them so well when they're off the eggs that you'd never guess it's a nest with buried eggs. They also like deep hay to nest in and will dig down several inches, lay their eggs, then cover them back up.

 

[Miss Lydia]

The one that has her nest outside is she safe from predators? My goose made her nest inside her house in deep bedding which was pine shavings I'd give the one inside more bedding so she can make her nest. She may never go broody though. Another question do you have a gander? But if there is no gander I'd take up the eggs. Letting them sit for 28 days is hard on them especially if nothing is going to hatch.

 

[Poakahi808]

The one that has her nest outside is she safe from predators? My goose made her nest inside her house in deep bedding which was pine shavings I'd give the one inside more bedding so she can make her nest. She may never go broody though. Another question do you have a gander? But if there is no gander I'd take up the eggs. Letting them sit for 28 days is hard on them especially if nothing is going to hatch.

Yes, they are both in a fenced in area close to my house, and the one is in a dog house in that area. I am in Hawaii so not many predators, but the first nest that was made was outside of the fenced area so I relocated them so they would be safer. I do have a gander and I have seen them mating. I did have a few eggs in my incubator, 2/3 showed veining, then one stopped about a week or two in. The other stopped a week before hatch. Huge bummer. It is SO hard to get birds besides chickens here, because of shipping, costs and laws too. Since we are off grid I cannot always run my incubator so I am going to finish hatching out some chickens and then the incubator retires for a while. It's a disappointment because this is literally my ONLY window of opportunity to grow my flock... The other girl is finally ON TOP of her eggs. I removed two and gave them to the other goose after I marked them. She is in the zone! I thought maybe the clutch was just too big for the other girl. I added some nesting material and tried to make the nest deeper but the next day she had pushed stuff around and cracked at least one egg. The shell was all the was left. At that point she was on the remaining eggs- 4 to 5 I think, except one that she was halfway on. I think next time around I will build some little a frames with no floor because I feel like the wooden floor is difficult as everything rolls around. When I had tons of hay in there the eggs would just get lost somewhere under it all so I ended up removing most of it.

I am considering adding a few buff geese to my flock... I have only had the Pilgrims for about a year and a half.

I am a little torn because in Hawaii it's kind of a you get what you get deal. There are lots of chinese and african geese, some embden and some toulouse but most people sell mixed breeds. I can see why the auto sexing trait is desireable and I like the fact that my geese are pretty docile (aside from the gander getting a bit feisty right now, protecting his ladies), and I really want to contribute to the preservation of the Pilgrims but DAMN. Why does it have to be so hard???

Sorry about my little rant. I just want a big flock so bad but it seems that the odds are mostly against me.

 

[FoodFreedomNow]

Broodies can sometimes take a while to "get" how to properly care for their eggs; the eggshell you found may have belonged to an egg that she knew wasn't viable.

Hang in there - you'll forget the stress you experienced trying to grow your flock when you see those adorable goslings.

Best of luck with your hatches!