the running chicken
In the Brooder
So early this morning I woke up to 2 dead, fully developed baby goslings... let out the gander and kept mumma calm... had three pips out of 5 eggs left. The mum also relocated all eggs to a new area of coop to sit away from the mess of the dead babies. Every 30 minutes I checked on her, the egg looked shrink wrapped! 6 hours of trying I helped it deliver the head...warm water, q tips etc.. I’ve had experience with chicken eggs helping the hatch before... I put back it under mumma. All was okay until she flung it by the neck out of the nest... I scooped it up and put it in the incubator to dry out. It also had a very not closed umbilical cord. This baby is alive, under brooder and weak.. tomorrow we will see. The next two hatched out babies suffered from the same shrink wrap issues! And once they were hatched, the mum tried to kill them. Finally I took all 5 eggs and am trying to finish in the incubator. I’m devastated. This is the hard part of homesteading! My goose is only 2. This was her first time sitting.. she made it to day 28... my question is why would she want to kill them. Why did she sit perfect until the hatch day and not have motherly instinct to care for them? Why were all the eggs shrink wrapped?? I have three hatched out but with help goslings. All weak but alive... brewers yeast, save a chick, apple cider vinegar waters and a bit of hopeful thinking and we will see what tomorrow brings.
