Weather is NUTS!!! Eggs in nests - UPDATE!!!!!

[EggsForIHOP]

Hey guys

I know I don't get to come on here NEARLY enough unless I am lurking and reading...but I'm having a panic attack!

We've had Cotton Patch Geese since last summer and FINALLY they started laying last week! When the weather was nice....and warm.....but it dropped SO SO COLD last night! 27* here and neither had decided to set on anything yet - I have 5 eggs from one girl and 4 from another and I REALLY am torn! I brought the eggs in last night - it was just SO cold! And kept them at about 60* (it's cold in this house but not like outside).

What would you do? Would you give them back....and risk the crazy Texas winter freezing them? Or try to incubate them yourself?????

I'm SOOOOO torn! I was really looking forward to the girls doing this on their own! It's part of the beauty of the breed! But they refuse to use their "goose house" and I was lucky enough to con them into laying in wire dog crates filled with hay and straw and wrapped in tarps....which I don't get because the goose house is so much nicer...but still!

UGH! So torn.....how is everyone else handling this temper tantrum from Mother Nature????

 

[Clodhoppers]

Well, mine started to lay 4 weeks ago. I have a main nest with lots of eggs and a secondary nest with only about 4 eggs. We had several frosts since egg laying started. I only collected 3 eggs early on and 4 last week that somebody wanted to incubate. Twice it looked like I'd have a broody but both times only for a few hours and off they'd go. First year of egg laying for my Toulouse. I decided to let them do their own thing this year. Should they raise goslings, I'll need to fence another acre of pasture and definitely build another hutch or two.

 

[keeperofthehearth]

I have Pilgrims and my goose, Lily started laying back in Feb. YIKES!! Our temps have been down below zero so I've been collecting and dating her eggs. We are finally due for some above freezing temps w/lows in the teens and 20's so I plan on putting some of her oldest eggs in her nest starting tomorrow. Once it looks like she is going to brood, I'll swap out her older eggs for the last/newest 8-10 shes laid. I did this last year and it worked out pretty well. With out extreme cold this year.....weeeelll..we'll see.

 

[RURU]

Did anyone know that when eggs get too cold it is not a good idea to incubate them due to it can cause deformities in the goslings. So all my eggs that freeze I dispose of. I have talked with people who have tried to incubate eggs that got cold or forgot to put them back into the incubator when cooling and they had deformities show up in the neck.

 

[EggsForIHOP]

RURU - that's what I thought/had heard (that extreme temp swings can cause issues). Thankfully, I brought the eggs in before the temps dropped, so they never spent any time outside when it was so bitter cold. I MIGHT have left them under the geese IF they had been broody....but they weren't there yet and I just wasn't gonna risk it I'm SO weak!

I DID fire up the 'bator and get them in there - I KNOW one of the girls was really getting to that "go broody set on these suckers" stage BUT...it was too cold for too many days in a row for my liking. So what did that goose do? She laid more eggs BWAHAHAHA! (Actually everyone has since laid an egg - cause they are on a roll I guess)

I now have 9 in the incubator and THREE out in their individual nests (respectively and all, not in one nest, they have all staked their spot so to speak). Fingers crossed and prayers said Mother Nature takes her meds and stops all this bi-polar nonsense of hot then cold I just want wots and wots of widdle biddy cotton patch goosie woosies!!!!! (Yes, I really talk to them like that - I think they like it, or at least tolerate it :/ )

 

[EggsForIHOP]

https://www.facebook.com/NadaLottaR...9345230813411/607061129375152/?type=1&theater

Let's see if I did it right...there should be a link to mama goose number 2 who has decided she is, indeed, broody! There she sits, since yesterday, with only a brief visit to the water for a drink.....so I have NINE cotton patch eggs in the incubator and her sitting on 5 (I swiped one from each of the other girls to kinda make her efforts "worth it") since she was ready to do her thing!

I'm SO excited!!! I can't wait for iddy biddy geesies!!!!