Wednesday 31st May 2017
Our 'female' West of England goslings
Yet ANOTHER momentous day, starting with the discovery of our second gosling and rather incredibly it’s another female!! By the end of the day we had another two although we rather fear that one won’t survive… (more on that in a bit). We have had yet another change around with the geese and also with the turkeys, and made some adaptations to our watering systems – all part of making life easier!! In addition we have really enjoyed having the cows in the top 3-acre field – we can now lean over our garden fence and have a chat to them (!!) and we have fallen in love with our Boer goats even more as we have discovered that they eat docks!!!
But back to our goslings. We began with seven eggs and when we candled them after a week, found just one not fertile. The rest grew but a further candling just before pipping, found one had stopped growing: we were down to five! By this stage Queen Baby Blue (QBB) was sitting on three and ‘Sporty’ Indian Game on two. QBB’s began to pip first and one of hers was the first to hatch. The second, found first thing, was also hers. A quick peek under Sporty found one pipping and the other definitely alive still (we could hear cheeping and see movement).
Early afternoon however found the pipping egg under Sporty quite crushed and the gosling itself dead. At that point the second was still intact with initial pipping from the shell obviously having begun!! Several hours later, we found that egg was also a little crushed and so we made the decision to help the gosling out before the damage became worse and we lost a second gosling.
It is always a tough call decided to help an emerging bird from its egg. Most of the time, the bird will die, sometimes they make it and ALWAYS there is the thought as to whether or not helping is the right thing.
The gosling itself was (is) somewhat weak. We have put it under QBB on the basis that Sporty is a rubbish mum and will probably NOT keep it alive. In better news though QBB hatched her last egg early evening so she has scored a hat-trick: three out of three and incredibly it looks as though we have ANOTHER female. Our weak one looks like a male!
In the morning we will find out whether we have three or four goslings!!!
Early afternoon however found the pipping egg under Sporty quite crushed and the gosling itself dead. At that point the second was still intact with initial pipping from the shell obviously having begun!! Several hours later, we found that egg was also a little crushed and so we made the decision to help the gosling out before the damage became worse and we lost a second gosling.
It is always a tough call decided to help an emerging bird from its egg. Most of the time, the bird will die, sometimes they make it and ALWAYS there is the thought as to whether or not helping is the right thing.
The gosling itself was (is) somewhat weak. We have put it under QBB on the basis that Sporty is a rubbish mum and will probably NOT keep it alive. In better news though QBB hatched her last egg early evening so she has scored a hat-trick: three out of three and incredibly it looks as though we have ANOTHER female. Our weak one looks like a male!
In the morning we will find out whether we have three or four goslings!!!