GanderWare
Hatching
- Apr 11, 2015
- 1
- 1
- 9
Sweet Vapor, our gosling died today. He had the cutest little chirp and a strong will. He came to be with us as an abandoned egg. His mother, a Canadian Goose, left him lying on the pavement in front of my fiance's workplace. We'd never raised geese, so she had no idea what to do, but she loved it. In a fury of passion and love we began the process of taking care of the egg. She took it home and wrapped it in a heating blanket and I bought the closest thing I could to an incubator. We set it up in a terrarium with a heat lamp, but the humidity and temperature were too low, so we got one-day shipping on a Brinsea Eco Incubator. Once it was set up in that we were good to go. We sat anxiously for a week until we could candle our egg. Our hopes were low, but to our surprise we saw veins. The development occurred normally. It was flipped daily and the environment was kept warm and moist.
Then finally all of our love and care paid off – we heard a chirp. It made it's first crack. A day later it made a nice opening. Then it had a crack that nearly ran all the way around the egg. Things were looking really good. We were incredibly excited. We had heard how hard it was to get an egg to get to just this step and our gosling was doing exceedingly well in our minds. It had been chirping strongly and frequently all day (boy did he have good lungs). We'd heard time and time again from posts online to never help a gosling hatch, so when his chirping sounded gargled we were alarmed, but stuck to the advice we'd heard. We regret doing so. He slowly became more quiet and his chirps ceased. He had twisted his head to his yoke and drowned in it. We assume he was having issues getting away from his yoke. I write this as a informative story for those who might have something similar happen to their hatching gosling. If the chirping becomes gargled or the gosling ceases to respond to stimuli, you may want to consider helping instead of going with the “leave it alone” approach in this type of situation. We certainly will with any goslings we have in the future. I hope this saves someone's gosling.
I know I'm not an expert or anything like that, so take this with a grain of salt. Use your own judgement.
Then finally all of our love and care paid off – we heard a chirp. It made it's first crack. A day later it made a nice opening. Then it had a crack that nearly ran all the way around the egg. Things were looking really good. We were incredibly excited. We had heard how hard it was to get an egg to get to just this step and our gosling was doing exceedingly well in our minds. It had been chirping strongly and frequently all day (boy did he have good lungs). We'd heard time and time again from posts online to never help a gosling hatch, so when his chirping sounded gargled we were alarmed, but stuck to the advice we'd heard. We regret doing so. He slowly became more quiet and his chirps ceased. He had twisted his head to his yoke and drowned in it. We assume he was having issues getting away from his yoke. I write this as a informative story for those who might have something similar happen to their hatching gosling. If the chirping becomes gargled or the gosling ceases to respond to stimuli, you may want to consider helping instead of going with the “leave it alone” approach in this type of situation. We certainly will with any goslings we have in the future. I hope this saves someone's gosling.
I know I'm not an expert or anything like that, so take this with a grain of salt. Use your own judgement.
