mgsmith0531
In the Brooder
- May 16, 2018
- 6
- 6
- 11
Good morning all!
I’m new here but familiar with this site as Google often leads me here for answers to questions. I did sign up this morning as I need a little help.
First a quick introduction – My boyfriend and I and our kiddos live on a small farm-ish. BF and I both work full time but we have a massive garden, a few fruit trees, 2 dogs, chickens, bunnies, quail, and hopefully soon a few geese (this is where I need help). We both grew up in the country with a semi-self sufficient lifestyle.
We are not new to hatching eggs – we hatch our own chicken and quail eggs and occasionally hatch eggs for others, we currently have some sort of fancy quail eggs incubating for a friend who order eggs through the mail. We always go by the typical day count for whatever we are hatching, know when to go into lockdown, and know enough to leave things be while being watchful. Temps and humidity aren’t normally an issue as we have decent incubators and we have good hatch rates.
All that said, I have a bit of a situation with some goose eggs I could use a little help with. I have wanted Toulouse geese forever. I did have a little flock of Embden geese years ago that I had hatched from eggs a previous neighbor gave me so geese aren’t new territory.
Here’s my problem – in my search for Toulouse hatching eggs I was directed to a local farmer who keeps Toulouse as guard geese for the organic meat chickens he raises. I spoke with him and he offered to just give me some eggs so I went to the farm to pick them up. What I didn’t realize was that the eggs he gave had already been under a goose and were in various stages of development. Long story short I’m down to 3 viable eggs. Of the 7 – one wasn’t fertile and 3 were dead (I’m very sure as they smelled awful and had no signs of veins).
So my big worry now with my 3 good eggs is that I can’t count days as I don’t know exactly how old they are. It will be 2 weeks this Sunday since I put them in my incubator. I have candled them several times and marked the edge of the air space to try to track development and get an idea of when to go into lockdown and when hatching may occur. On Monday evening when I candled them the air space had taken a definite and dramatic dip sideways and I could see wiggling around the edge. I stopped turning the eggs then and really couldn’t turn them anyway as they just rolled back to one side on their own.
I normally don’t open the incubator except to add water for humidity and I don’t normally candle the eggs unless they are late or something seems weird so I know what I’m seeing – sort of. As of this morning I’m still seeing lots of wiggling around the edges of the air space. I’m not sure if the internal membrane has been pipped or if I’m just seeing shadowy movement. I don’t want to keep messing with them but I’m also worried about where we are in the pre-hatching process and when hatching may occur. I normally track this by the calendar, not by what I can see in the egg and it seems like a guessing game.
Any insight and direction would be greatly appreciated. Please don’t stomp on me for accepting a messy clutch of eggs from a farmer I didn’t know. I’m already kicking myself. But I’m here now and really wanting to see these little guys through to hatch. I also know I should just leave them alone and what will be will be but its so hard. I’ve never been in this situation where I can’t mark days on the calendar to know if they should be pipping of if they are late.
Sorry for the long post and thanks so much if you read it all. I know there’s lots of knowledge here and am looking forward to your insight.
I’m new here but familiar with this site as Google often leads me here for answers to questions. I did sign up this morning as I need a little help.
First a quick introduction – My boyfriend and I and our kiddos live on a small farm-ish. BF and I both work full time but we have a massive garden, a few fruit trees, 2 dogs, chickens, bunnies, quail, and hopefully soon a few geese (this is where I need help). We both grew up in the country with a semi-self sufficient lifestyle.
We are not new to hatching eggs – we hatch our own chicken and quail eggs and occasionally hatch eggs for others, we currently have some sort of fancy quail eggs incubating for a friend who order eggs through the mail. We always go by the typical day count for whatever we are hatching, know when to go into lockdown, and know enough to leave things be while being watchful. Temps and humidity aren’t normally an issue as we have decent incubators and we have good hatch rates.
All that said, I have a bit of a situation with some goose eggs I could use a little help with. I have wanted Toulouse geese forever. I did have a little flock of Embden geese years ago that I had hatched from eggs a previous neighbor gave me so geese aren’t new territory.
Here’s my problem – in my search for Toulouse hatching eggs I was directed to a local farmer who keeps Toulouse as guard geese for the organic meat chickens he raises. I spoke with him and he offered to just give me some eggs so I went to the farm to pick them up. What I didn’t realize was that the eggs he gave had already been under a goose and were in various stages of development. Long story short I’m down to 3 viable eggs. Of the 7 – one wasn’t fertile and 3 were dead (I’m very sure as they smelled awful and had no signs of veins).
So my big worry now with my 3 good eggs is that I can’t count days as I don’t know exactly how old they are. It will be 2 weeks this Sunday since I put them in my incubator. I have candled them several times and marked the edge of the air space to try to track development and get an idea of when to go into lockdown and when hatching may occur. On Monday evening when I candled them the air space had taken a definite and dramatic dip sideways and I could see wiggling around the edge. I stopped turning the eggs then and really couldn’t turn them anyway as they just rolled back to one side on their own.
I normally don’t open the incubator except to add water for humidity and I don’t normally candle the eggs unless they are late or something seems weird so I know what I’m seeing – sort of. As of this morning I’m still seeing lots of wiggling around the edges of the air space. I’m not sure if the internal membrane has been pipped or if I’m just seeing shadowy movement. I don’t want to keep messing with them but I’m also worried about where we are in the pre-hatching process and when hatching may occur. I normally track this by the calendar, not by what I can see in the egg and it seems like a guessing game.
Any insight and direction would be greatly appreciated. Please don’t stomp on me for accepting a messy clutch of eggs from a farmer I didn’t know. I’m already kicking myself. But I’m here now and really wanting to see these little guys through to hatch. I also know I should just leave them alone and what will be will be but its so hard. I’ve never been in this situation where I can’t mark days on the calendar to know if they should be pipping of if they are late.
Sorry for the long post and thanks so much if you read it all. I know there’s lots of knowledge here and am looking forward to your insight.
