Pics Of Baby Gosling

[kuntrygirl]

Well, since my geese are doing a fantastic job at NOT hatching their own eggs, I took it upon myself to plant many of their eggs under the "other" broody chickens, ducks and turkey hens.

Here are pics of the progress of the egg hatching.

This baby was hatched Sunday, April 1, 2012 by a Bourbon Red Turkey.


I brought the baby outside a couple days ago to meet the rest of the goose gang. At first they ran from the little baby but then they warmed up to it and was loving all over it and the baby loved them. It loved them so much, it found one of the girls setting on eggs and scooted under it until it was time to go inside. They attacked me when I went to get the baby, so I had to do it fast and I had to run for my life.



The baby decided to get under a setting goose and go to sleep.



This baby was hatched last night by a chicken.


A muscovy hen hatched another baby last night but it wasn't all of the way out of the shell on last night and it hadn't made much progress at 5:00 AM this morning, so I kinda helped it out. I put it back under the duck so that it can dry off. I will take it and bring it inside this evening when I get home.


I have about 15 more eggs planted under more broody turkeys, ducks and chickens. I'm hoping they all hatch. The geese are semi broody but not setting for extended periods of time. We'll see what they do. If they don't decide to hatch anything, it's fine because I'll have more than enough goslings.

 

[chicmom]

Awesome and contratulations! Such cute babies.....I didn't know geese were so loving to their babies. So sweet that they were afraid first and then they really liked the little gosling....

 

[Kevin565]

. They're so cute!!

 

[larkflying]

So cute -- you have a lot of sitting birds! Good idea for next year . . .

 

[kuntrygirl]

Thanks everyone.

For the last few years, I have had a disaster as far as the girls hatching eggs and I have absolutely NO experience hatching goose eggs in an incubator. Last year, I think I only had 1 gosling hatch and the girls laid probably 100 goose eggs. The year before that, I only had 2 babies hatch and again they laid about 100 goose eggs and the other years no babies hatched. The geese would either lay in an unsafe area and I couldn't move them and something would happen to the eggs or the eggs would get wet and go bad or they would step on them and crack them open or the chickens would break them open. It was a painful year for me. So this year, I decided to experiment because I knew it couldn't get any worse. So I placed eggs under every hen that went broody to see if the eggs would hatch. Well, to my surprise they have begun hatching and I am so thrilled. So, now I know that a chicken, a duck and a turkey CAN hatch a goose egg. It was an experiment that worked. I just feel so bad taking the baby gosling away from the hen that hatched them (especially the chicken that sat for more than 21 days) but I can't leave the baby alone with the hen.

I'll post more pics of the others if they hatch.

 

[Poultrybonkers]

Oh my gosh they are so adorable!!!!! Wish my pair would hatch some.

 

[kuntrygirl]

I had another gosling that hatched a couple of days ago. One of my banty hens hatched this little one. Here is a pic of him with some of my Maran chicks that hatched this week. The geese have NOT hatched ONE SINGLE eggs this year but the turkeys, ducks and chickens are hatching the goose eggs.