Weird Internal Pip

AndreaV636

In the Brooder
Jan 4, 2017
29
15
49
Northern Illinois
Hello!

I have a gosling due to hatch on Thursday. Everything has gone normally up until today... the air cell increased dramatically in size as expected, but at the point where I expected the bird to internally pip and the shadow of the beak to start showing up in the air cell, something I've not seen before happened instead. On candling, the egg almost appears to have two air cells on opposite sides of the egg and large shadows are "flashing" (for a lack of a better word!) on one side. I'm thinking the gosling is possibly in the wrong position inside the egg. I do not hear any "clicking" nor do I feel any pecking at the shell as I normally do after internal pip.

Has anyone experienced something like this before? I guess I'm wondering a few things: 1) has the bird actually internally pipped yet? 2) is there anything I can do to correct its position if it is, in fact, not where it's supposed to be, and 3) did something I've done possibly contribute to this problem?

I attached a few pictures... the first is a picture of the original air cell which is still present. The second is of the opposite side where it sort of looks like a second air cell. The third is of the space between these two dips. It looks like a beak, but it is not... it stays still while I can see the bird move around in the background.

Thanks for your help!!
 

Attachments

  • original air cell.jpg
    original air cell.jpg
    373.9 KB · Views: 38
  • opposite side.jpg
    opposite side.jpg
    408.8 KB · Views: 28
  • space between two dips.jpg
    space between two dips.jpg
    264.4 KB · Views: 29
I don't see an internal pip yet, and the air cell looks like it's saddled - was this egg shipped, or was it one from your own birds?

What date did you set them? Goslings take 28 to 32 days to hatch on average, and can take even longer than that in some cases.
 
Thank you for your input. It was definitely a saddled air cell. I had never heard of this, but looked pictures up when I saw your reply.

Sadly, the bird did not make it. :( And after reading your reply and doing some googling about saddled air cells, I think I know exactly what went wrong... These were not shipped, but there was an incident with this particular egg where it got banged pretty good. I made a note of it and watched it very closely. When it was still alive and developing, I thought I'd dodged a bullet. But it obviously damaged the air cell, which was not something that was on my radar.

I opened the egg once I was certain the gosling had passed, and everything else was as it should have been. It never did pip up into the air cell, though. Poor little thing. :(

In a situation like that, could I have tried to puncture the membrane? I pipped its shell earlier in the day, but obviously without breaking through the membrane it couldn't access that outside air...
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom