The latest Gosling batch has not been massively successful. On Thursday we had a male hatch which we put with the current seven hatched a week ago, but the remaining 5 eggs seemed not to be doing a lot. A second had externally pipped but then not much progress was made and then another two started but again, it all seemed very slow.
Yesterday morning, the first one to start was obviously in trouble and close examination revealed a very oozy, sticky mass inside the egg and around the gosling, almost like it had pipped too early and wasn’t ready to emerge. By this stage it was half out of the egg but bits of the membrane had stuck so we unpicked and discovered a very under developed naval. The bird died very soon after. These eggs were all under a broody incidentally so this won't be one we will use again for geese!! Then in the evening we intervened with the second two as well, as their membranes were glued fast and it was obvious they were going to make no more progress on their own. We had to soak parts of the egg/ goslings to get them apart but we ended up with two birds, a male and a female. The male had an under developed naval just like his brother but not as bad. The female looked fairly normal albeit weak, with a mucky tail, wings and bum.
The male had died by morning but the female made it though the night and is now ensconced in the upstairs shower room complete with broody hen (artificial), food and water.
We were determined this year, not to have orphan goslings that were destined to live on our desks: seems like we don’t have any say in the matter!!!