We Have A Hatchling!

I am so excited to report, our first goose egg started pipping on Friday January 8th the gosling made it out of the shell in just less than 24 hours and is doing well so far.  The bad part is because I saved several days worth of eggs and set them at once and that batch were not all fertile...it is alone.  I am sure it will become a pet, even if it ends up being a male.  It has already been held and cuddled, my husband wants it to be a girl so bad...I am sure he is probably trying to think of names already.  I do have more eggs in the incubator, but again saved some and set them as a batch.  They will not hatch for at least two more weeks.  The baby ducks are just over five weeks old now, and they are to big to put this gosling with right now.  Ducks and geese grow at an alarming rate, so this little baby may be able to go in the brooder with the ducks in about a week.

I have started just adding the goose eggs to the incubator as they are laid now.  I also sold two baby ducks, so I started another batch of duck eggs too...then after other people asked about ducks, I set another dozen a week later.  Ducks and geese are social animals and need companions, I feel bad that this little gosling has no companions to grow up with at this time.  I had set six goose eggs at the same time, but only one was fertile.  Normally a duck egg takes 28 days to hatch, a goose egg 30 days.  I will set up another incubator as a hatcher and when it is time to stop turning the eggs, or lockdown...I will move the ones due to hatch to that incubator.  It is not good to be opening up the incubator after lockdown.  I did assist this gosling in the hatching process, I was afraid I had shrink wrapped it by opening up the incubator to candle other eggs, add water...and additional eggs.  I took pieces off of the shell and pulled the membrane away from it's beak so it could breath before I went to bed the night before it emerged from the shell.  It was out of the shell the next morning.  Goose egg shells are thick, so it being my very first time hatching a goose, I didn't want to loose it.

When a chick, duck, gosling, etc.  gets shrink wrapped...the inner membrane adheres to them and makes it basically stick to them, as it dries out it can become either paper like or like cement if the moisture content inside the egg is high...like if the humidity on the day it pips is high from raining or too high of humidity in the incubator.  It can smother the hatchling...paper like is better, I think...less chance of drowning in the shell.  Too high of humidity makes the hatchling wet with a gel like substance (the white of the egg) does not dry out enough.  Some people call it "Sticky Chick" and if they incubator is opened after they pip the shell, that gel dries up and forms a cement like coating on the hatchlings down.  It keeps them from being able to turn in the shell to zip it open.  It can clog their nostrils and keep them from getting enough oxygen, they can smother and die without intervention...believe me, I know.  We have a lot of rain, I have assisted a lot.  I learned the hard way.

This is a learning process.  I have lost whole batches of chicks because they drowned in their shell.  I live in a high humidity area and was following the recommended hatching humidity in the beginning.    I had to adapt and learn the process own my own, to have it work in my location.  The first two batches of eggs I set drowned in the shell, even some of my later hatches were not good because of trying to find the right balance of humidity.  I have hatched eggs upright in egg flats, left them on the turner to hatch so that the air cell generally at the larger end of the egg was in a position that even if the humidity did not allow proper evaporation, that the hatchlings would survive.  I found that not all eggs have the air cell on the large end...how?  Well, experience...if you hatch in a carton and the egg in question has the air cell on the wrong end the hatchling pips and the remaining moisture leaks out and glues the shell to the turner or egg flat.  I have had it happen at least 4 times!  Not all of the hatchlings survived, because I did not know until I tried to remove the eggs.  I did save at least two.  But it is wise to candle the eggs before setting them into your incubator, that way you can make sure the air cell is right-side up and the eggs don't have any cracks in them.

Also, if you are hatching eggs make sure you set only the cleanest eggs with no damage.  I learned that if you get hatching eggs through the mail, and any break and coat the other eggs...bacteria grows and can get into the eggs that come in contact with it...it can cause birth defects.  Don't set eggs that have weak spots or wrinkled areas either, those areas light up well during candling.  This too I learned the hard way.  You can contaminate your whole batch of eggs putting one questionable egg into the incubator.   Always, always, always sanitize your incubator after each batch of eggs.  Just trying to share some of the information that I have found out, so you won't waist your time and money on failed hatches and deformed or chicks with special needs like I did.  I have two chickens on my back porch now that are blind in one eye, had my husband put down several that had such bad leg issues that no amount of doctoring on my part could help them and I still have two out in the yard one that has a spot in his eye and has poor vision in it and one with a deformed leg.  If he could not function on his own, he too would have been put down.