FarmWheeler
In the Brooder
- Mar 26, 2020
- 21
- 29
- 46
Thank you to everyone who gave me advice over the past couple of weeks! It was my first incubation and I'm a born worrier so you're patience was appreciated.
I had 4 pilgrim goose eggs shipped and all hatched, and I primarily followed this post's guidance for incubation:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/goose-incubation-hatching-guide-completed.491013/
I used River Systems ET Super 12 (Semi-Auto) Incubator but ignored the tray and turned them by hand as they were too large to fit in the depressions and I wanted to turn them 180 degrees rather than the 45 degrees the tray allowed.
1) Let sit for 24 hours pointed side down to get to room temperature, while the incubator stabilizes to 37.9C with one humidity tray filled.
2) Weigh eggs, draw and X and O on alternate sides to keep track of how many times you've turned it.
3) Place into incubator on one side and begin turning 180 degrees 5x a day so that they rest on alternate sides each night.
4) At day 9 begin 15 minute cooling, along with misting with a spray bottle. I also began using the cooling window to weigh and candle the eggs to monitor their progress. To my horror at this second weighing the eggs appeared to have gained weight! Apparently this is impossible, so I decided to just chart the weight loss progress from this point and extrapolate backwards and to keep a close eye on air sac development.
5) Day 23 the air sacs began to dip down! Despite this being 3 days earlier than the predicted date I decided to go from the egg's progress rather than stick to my calendar at all costs and so stopped turning them at this point, marking the air sac and leaving them with the bigger side facing upwards.
6) Day 25 two of the eggs began shadowing like crazy, followed the next day by the other two eggs.
7) Day 27 the first two eggs pipped internally, followed by the other two eggs a day later. As soon as the eggs had pipped internally I made a safety hole at the top of the air sac following this post mainly: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/guide-to-assisted-hatching-for-all-poultry.72886/ I decided not to wait because from everything I read it didn't seem like it could do any harm, and I'm glad I did because if I hadn't I would have been anxious for 2 days that they had suffocated and probably been candling them non-stop which might have had a negative affect. As it was, once I had made a safety hole I bumped up the humidity (since it is a simulated external pip and I didn't want the membranes to dry out, or for the eggs to keep losing weight at this point) and then felt happy to just leave them in the incubator to do their business.
8) Day 29 the first chick pipped externally and hatched in about 6 hours by 9pm. The second chick had pipped externally at that point and hatched at 3am (I was woken by the sound of her clumping around in the incubator peeping) The third chick was out by 8am the next morning. Egg 3 hatched that next evening around 11pm.
So the final chick, more 24 hours after the first still hatched on the very first day of my predicted hatching window.
I'm so happy to have 4 healthy chicks considering I thought so many times during incubation that I'd flubbed it and killed them somehow, and that they were shipped. Considering how there's so little consensus online over how to incubate exactly I really appreciated this forum and everyone's guidance!
Issues:
Weighing: I used two electronic scales for the initial weighing and tried to be very careful but nevertheless I still messed up! Next time I'll be extra careful with those weights. However it still worked out fine by working from the air sac size.
Humidity: The incubator instructions state that with one tray filled humidity should be around 45-55%, however about halfway through incubation it clicked that that is probably on TOP of the ambient humidity in the incubator room. I ordered a hygrometer and calibrated it using the salt method and realized the internal incubator humidity was probably closer to 65%! (Maybe a forced air incubator negates the ambient humidity? Someone please correct me) After panicking for a couple of days about whether to run it dry I decided that since the eggs were losing between 1-2g/day and the air sacs were a good size to just keep doing what I was doing and stick with the incubator instructions: 1 tray of water filled.
Air sac monitoring: I only started drawing on the air sac at day 23 when I would have found it helpful to have done it at intervals of every few days or so to track the progress more consistently. The dip down was so significant thought that even marking it in the last few days still helped though.
Anyway here are the goslings! You can see the difference 24 hours makes!
I had 4 pilgrim goose eggs shipped and all hatched, and I primarily followed this post's guidance for incubation:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/goose-incubation-hatching-guide-completed.491013/
I used River Systems ET Super 12 (Semi-Auto) Incubator but ignored the tray and turned them by hand as they were too large to fit in the depressions and I wanted to turn them 180 degrees rather than the 45 degrees the tray allowed.
1) Let sit for 24 hours pointed side down to get to room temperature, while the incubator stabilizes to 37.9C with one humidity tray filled.
2) Weigh eggs, draw and X and O on alternate sides to keep track of how many times you've turned it.
3) Place into incubator on one side and begin turning 180 degrees 5x a day so that they rest on alternate sides each night.
4) At day 9 begin 15 minute cooling, along with misting with a spray bottle. I also began using the cooling window to weigh and candle the eggs to monitor their progress. To my horror at this second weighing the eggs appeared to have gained weight! Apparently this is impossible, so I decided to just chart the weight loss progress from this point and extrapolate backwards and to keep a close eye on air sac development.
5) Day 23 the air sacs began to dip down! Despite this being 3 days earlier than the predicted date I decided to go from the egg's progress rather than stick to my calendar at all costs and so stopped turning them at this point, marking the air sac and leaving them with the bigger side facing upwards.
6) Day 25 two of the eggs began shadowing like crazy, followed the next day by the other two eggs.
7) Day 27 the first two eggs pipped internally, followed by the other two eggs a day later. As soon as the eggs had pipped internally I made a safety hole at the top of the air sac following this post mainly: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/guide-to-assisted-hatching-for-all-poultry.72886/ I decided not to wait because from everything I read it didn't seem like it could do any harm, and I'm glad I did because if I hadn't I would have been anxious for 2 days that they had suffocated and probably been candling them non-stop which might have had a negative affect. As it was, once I had made a safety hole I bumped up the humidity (since it is a simulated external pip and I didn't want the membranes to dry out, or for the eggs to keep losing weight at this point) and then felt happy to just leave them in the incubator to do their business.
8) Day 29 the first chick pipped externally and hatched in about 6 hours by 9pm. The second chick had pipped externally at that point and hatched at 3am (I was woken by the sound of her clumping around in the incubator peeping) The third chick was out by 8am the next morning. Egg 3 hatched that next evening around 11pm.
So the final chick, more 24 hours after the first still hatched on the very first day of my predicted hatching window.
I'm so happy to have 4 healthy chicks considering I thought so many times during incubation that I'd flubbed it and killed them somehow, and that they were shipped. Considering how there's so little consensus online over how to incubate exactly I really appreciated this forum and everyone's guidance!
Issues:
Weighing: I used two electronic scales for the initial weighing and tried to be very careful but nevertheless I still messed up! Next time I'll be extra careful with those weights. However it still worked out fine by working from the air sac size.
Humidity: The incubator instructions state that with one tray filled humidity should be around 45-55%, however about halfway through incubation it clicked that that is probably on TOP of the ambient humidity in the incubator room. I ordered a hygrometer and calibrated it using the salt method and realized the internal incubator humidity was probably closer to 65%! (Maybe a forced air incubator negates the ambient humidity? Someone please correct me) After panicking for a couple of days about whether to run it dry I decided that since the eggs were losing between 1-2g/day and the air sacs were a good size to just keep doing what I was doing and stick with the incubator instructions: 1 tray of water filled.
Air sac monitoring: I only started drawing on the air sac at day 23 when I would have found it helpful to have done it at intervals of every few days or so to track the progress more consistently. The dip down was so significant thought that even marking it in the last few days still helped though.
Anyway here are the goslings! You can see the difference 24 hours makes!
