2020 Gosling Hatch-A-Long

[Iain Utah]

Serv, are your females yearlings? None of my dewlaps lay fertile eggs until they are 2yo.

I'm seeing breeding and nesting, but not paying attention to who is laying where. It is still bitter winter and all eggs freeze quickly.

 

[CindyinSD]

Nice here... or it was until a few hours ago. I filled the kiddie pool for my geese in the hope it would help their breeding. DH was watching them out the kitchen window. "Come here!" he says, all excited. "That one goose is standing on the other one!" He's so cute. I didn't get there in time to see, but maybe...

I've been eating the eggs--three girls, three eggs laid every other day, none fertile yet. I'm getting behind. Will have to give some more away soon. DH will not eat eggs unless I hide them in cake or brownies or similar.

 

[ColtHandorf]

Still no eggs yet. I've seen them breeding multiple times a day. And boy is the gander being super aggressive. Even the goose is hissing at the dogs and stuff. They've got the whole backyard to themselves and a nice dry nest with hay. Hopefully she'll start soon.

 

[ColtHandorf]

So I took the dogs out yesterday and noticed the hay pile I’d given the geese as a nest had really been fiddled with a lot. While they were distracted I crept out there and rummaged around and didn’t see anything. Feeling a bit like the people in the novel The Lost World stealing tyrannosaur eggs I took of my glove and plunged it down through the hay and gently lifted it up and...

*gasp*

Georgia has laid her first egg of the season!

Now I do have some questions. Last year she laid her first clutch at her first home and lost them all when their pet pig found the nest. When she came to live with me, she laid a second clutch and lost them to snakes. I think she went broody on the seventh egg? Anyway, I have a lady who wants to buy some geese eggs for hatching. Should I pull the eggs every few days? Will that throw her off? If I let her hatch this first clutch will she lay a second and go broody? Or will the goslings keep her occupied where she won’t want to lay again? How large are their clutches generally? She’s an American Buff by the way.

I really want them to set and raise the babies successfully. So I don’t want to mess anything up for them. I’m also not at all confident in incubating them myself. The LG incubator is crap and the eggs won’t fit in the Brinsea.

 

[donkeydew2farms]

So I took the dogs out yesterday and noticed the hay pile I’d given the geese as a nest had really been fiddled with a lot. While they were distracted I crept out there and rummaged around and didn’t see anything. Feeling a bit like the people in the novel The Lost World stealing tyrannosaur eggs I took of my glove and plunged it down through the hay and gently lifted it up and...

*gasp*

View attachment 2036789

Georgia has laid her first egg of the season!

Now I do have some questions. Last year she laid her first clutch at her first home and lost them all when their pet pig found the nest. When she came to live with me, she laid a second clutch and lost them to snakes. I think she went broody on the seventh egg? Anyway, I have a lady who wants to buy some geese eggs for hatching. Should I pull the eggs every few days? Will that throw her off? If I let her hatch this first clutch will she lay a second and go broody? Or will the goslings keep her occupied where she won’t want to lay again? How large are their clutches generally? She’s an American Buff by the way.

View attachment 2036795

I really want them to set and raise the babies successfully. So I don’t want to mess anything up for them. I’m also not at all confident in incubating them myself. The LG incubator is crap and the eggs won’t fit in the Brinsea.

I got goose rails for my brinsea but the are a little tight for the African eggs. if I did not have to work I would not use the rails. I would turn them by hand. I am getting ready to incubate some eggs I have
AM also. BTW you birds are very pretty.

 

[ColtHandorf]

I got goose rails for my brinsea but the are a little tight for the African eggs. if I did not have to work I would not use the rails. I would turn them by hand.

It's a really small Brinsea. It holds like 12 bantam eggs and 8-ish large fowl eggs. No way are goose eggs fitting in there. lol

 

[CindyinSD]

You might want to check fertility before you allow your goose to spend her health on brooding. It sounds to me like you've lost the clutches so far to things that happened to the eggs, not to any hatched goslings. So, you might end up with nothing more than a nest full of rotten eggs.

I've been checking the many eggs my AB geese are giving me and so far none are fertile. Very nice fried, though. I watched little gander try yesterday when I was filling their water and it was sad. Poor guy missed the spot entirely, and that was with her actively trying to help by scootching closer. I really felt sorry for them. I was all tensed up, rooting for them... but no.

I have a kiddie pool just like yours and did set it up on the two above-freezing days we had last week but I wasn't able to observe closely enough to tell then how they were doing. They're all young though, and inexperienced, and our days are still pretty short. At any rate, I didn't see where you mentioned checking fertility so I thought I would bring it up.

 

[DiYMama540]

BB goose is still laying! About every other day she lays a new egg!

I did take the first three to cook just because none of us had tried goose eggs (yum!) When I cracked them I saw the bullseye!!
The weather has decided to swing back to winter though, so now I'm worried the eggs in the nest currently may get too cold to be viable.

Hang in there @ColtHandorf !! This is your year for fuzzies!!

 

[ColtHandorf]

You might want to check fertility before you allow your goose to spend her health on brooding. It sounds to me like you've lost the clutches so far to things that happened to the eggs, not to any hatched goslings. So, you might end up with nothing more than a nest full of rotten eggs.

They are fertile. They’ve been successfully mating for over a week. And in her struggles to drive the snakes off that were plaguing her last year she broke several eggs. They were very, fertile with developing goslings. It was quite sad.

 

[CluckNDoodle]

Good morning! I have 4 White Sebastopol Goose eggs in the incubator, today is day 4! I peeked at the eggs on day 3 and I wasn't able to see any development yet but I'm hopeful it's just because it's so early. I can usually catch development in my chicken eggs super early so I'm feeling so impatient, lol!