Are Three-Week Old Goose Eggs Still Fertile?

[jessi]

Thanks, Adrian, your remarks really help. Yes, I imagine it is much easier to get good at candling with artificial incubation. When a goose is the incubator, you only get a chance to peek at the eggs when the goose gets off the nest for her daily quick drink, mouthful and bath. You can try to get them out from under her, of course, but you would probably get badly bit. And doing that may cause her to get upset and leave the nest for good.

I think you're right - I need a better flashlight. I candle in the garage where it's dark, but I can't candle at night, as that's not when the goose is up for her break. My policy is generally to let the goose take care of the incubation. In the third week, I test the eggs for stinking, and throw any away that smell bad. But other than that, I let the goose handle it. This time was different, as I wanted to make sure she's not spending her time sitting on eggs that were not fertile to begin with. But clearly, from what I've seen in the one candling, the eggs are doing something, which means she started out with fertile eggs. That's good enough for me. I'm leaving it up to her from here on in and trusting we'll have some babies out of it. Thanks for everybody's help!

 

[adrian]

You're welcome. Hopefully, she is sitting on fertile eggs. Did you candle the eggs before you gave them to her? How did you store the eggs for three weeks? If any are indeed fertile and viable, at three weeks the hatch rate will be low. Your problem is likely not fertility but viability of the germinal disc as it may be destroyed if held under the wrong conditions, or if it shouldn't reach incubation temperature for too long. If the germinal disc had been destroyed in some way before the eggs were placed under her, bacterial growth can show itself in the shape of a dark shadow that, as you said, sways with the yolk as the egg is moved. What you will notice is that the air cell at the large end of the egg will be large, particularly if the eggs have been stored incorrectly. Temperatures of about 50-60F are good for holding eggs; sometimes lower if they are being held for an extended length of time. The environment of a refrigerator is too cool to maintain the viability of an otherwise fertile egg for too long a time, and so after about a week they will be most likely useless.

As I said, the eggs may be rotting now that they are warm enough for bacteria to grow, or may have been rotting earlier. That doesn't eliminate the chance that you have a few viable eggs, but the reality is that the chances are slim after the two week mark. Even after the week mark, I have noticed very few eggs are viable, and thus never show signs of development. Out of 4 older goose eggs that I received (the breeder obviously was not as competent as I would have liked), I had one develop. That one made it to hatching and is now a healthy baby. How long has she been setting on the nest?

Oh, and also – if I were you, I'd order some goslings, stick them under mother goose when they arrive, and take the eggs and see if you can incubate them yourself. You'll most likely not reap anything, but at least you won't be as disappointed as she would be if nothing hatches.

 

[jessi]

Wow, you've given me some stuff to think about, Adrian. It seems strange to me that goose eggs are mostly good only after one week. If you think about it in terms of nature, it doesn't seem that should be the case. Geese only lay every other day, and they don't start setting until they have at least six eggs, usually. Doing the math, to get six eggs takes 2 1/2 to 3 weeks. And often they won't set until they have 8, so add another week to that. Surely most eggs would be good enough until the mother has layed enough to make a set big enough to sit on.

Still, you obviously have a lot of experience with this and a lot of knowledge about eggs, so you may be right. I do really appreciate sharing this information with me. Let me tell you how I stored the eggs. I kept them in a cool garage lying flat on their side and turned them a quarter turn every day. Actually, the garage was cool as garages go because it's insulated, but we had few days of weather in the high 80's and the garage got warm by evening. Certainly the temperatures were not at the 50 or 60 degrees that you describe, except perhaps during some of the nights. I never realized temperature of the eggs was so important. Again, I wonder about this, because in nature, the goose lays the egg and the weather does what it will. Geese lay in warm weather, let the eggs collect for a week or two, then sit on them. But I guess you're saying conditions are more optimum for hatching if eggs are exposed to temperatures only in the 50-to-60-degree range.

I think, in light of what you told me, I am going to find a good light and candle the eggs again today, tomorrow, or the next day, whenever I can sneak them away from that goose. That would be Day 10, Day 11, or Day 12. Maybe the veins didn't show up before because I looked with a poor light and it was only Day 7 or 8. If I manage to see eggs now, that would be a good sign.

I will think about your suggestion of ordering some babies and putting them under the mom. Is it likely she would accept them if she's only been setting a couple of weeks though?

 

[adrian]

It is curious, but that is most often the case... I received 7 african goose eggs, and only four developed. The four that developed were the newest ones. Many of the others failed to do so because they were 10 or more days old. The goose tends to set during the night and cover the nest during the day, leaving the eggs alone otherwise until a few days have passed. It's hard to say what these habits do to the eggs. Perhaps, because she's setting at some times but not others, the germinal disc begins to divide but does so very slowly, rather than the eggs remaining dormant, so to speak. If she were to set for two to four days, only at times, on an egg or two, it would likely make the gosling hatch, at the most, a day earlier than the others, a natural phenomenon in the wild. A week for eggs being naturally incubated tends to be fine, but we humans somehow find a way to destroy eggs. I've heard people say not to set goose eggs any older than four days old, but that is ridiculous unless the eggs are being held in terrible conditions.

I observe wild geese nesting every season, and most of them start setting after the first or second egg is laid, without budging afterwards.

Three weeks is a lot different than the normal few days in a nest that the eggs wait. And many breeders have said, from personal experience, that hatchability declines after a certain amount of time. Just think about it – if a wild goose left her nest alone for two or three weeks, how safe would the eggs be from predators? How late would the hatching season be? It takes a month for geese to hatch, and add 2-3 weeks to that and it's impossibly late. It is simply irrational.

http://www.poultryindustrycouncil.ca/factsheets/fs_122.pdf

Although about quail, there are charts here:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1516-635X2008000300001&script=sci_arttext

I hope you find that interesting. I don't know if geese have an exact knowledge of how long they have been setting; some people hatch chicken eggs under geese and ducks, so there's a good chance it'll work out if you were to put goslings under her. Geese are extremely loyal parents and setters.


- Adrian