[Dans]

So we're currently enjoying lots of fertile goose eggs, enough that we're getting slightly in-undated despite giving/selling them to visitors and eating them when we have guests. I've started to think about the end of the laying season and what the geese will be doing for remaining months of the year. I've also being eyeing up our gander and remembering how tasty that goose was we had a few xmas' ago.

Would I be crazy to keep a few eggs aside and set them under one of our geese? One of them seems a bit more mothering than the other, she spends a lot longer on the nest. The issues I can see:

1) I've heard that geese can crush their eggs and fights can break out with two geese wanting to sit.

2) We 'rescued' these geese from our neighbour. He said that his kids had hatched them, so I am guessing that there is a good possibility my geese are related to my gander.

3) We'll get less eggs once they really start sitting. That may not be a bad thing in the short term but it may be best to do this towards the end of the laying season or is that then too late for raising goslings?

4) Customers for the geese at the end. I might be tempted to keep another female or two but all boys would need to go. We would have a goose and I can think of a couple of others but maybe we should check demand and then put the appropriate amount of eggs under. Maybe some dummy eggs to make enough that she stops laying.

5) I have absolutely no idea what I am doing or what I would need. Can I just put the eggs in the nest and leave her to it? Do I need heat lamps and a pen area for just in case?

Dans

[congerchamp]

I always use a incubator to hatch goose eggs and introduce goslings to the geese. They usually take to them straight away but watch them for a while just in case. I never had much luck with the geese hatching their own eggs. Always had 2 or3 geese trying to sit on same eggs and not incubating the eggs properly. I kept around 50 geese and only 1goose ever managed to hatch her own eggs. So always incubated eggs to have geese for the xmas trade.

[hughesy]

Exact opposite here. Never had success with an incubator but we let ours sit towards the end of the laying season and they usually hatch a brood of seven or eight without any trouble. Never had any trouble with geese arguing over nests either once one has got settled that's it.

[Shropshirelass]

See with us we hatch the majority of ours with a incubator & from a trio of birds doing it this way I normally get 50-70 eggs a season with them & normally in a good year get around 95-98% hatch rate, By doing this it leaves me with approx 20-30 xmas birds & a few to sell on, A lot I sell as goslings or sell some eggs, sometimes with geese I do find if your having a bad year hatching some then normally everyone else seems to, it's the same thing with "July sprawlers".

I am do let my females sit late in the season, my young birds did sit last year, but got impatient towards the end & didn't hatch anything but they did rear goslings, so I'm going to try again this year, I have in the past let geese sit but my last 2 females that died last year, never hatched anything despite being very fertile, they would sit every year but just crush eggs or goslings when hatching or rats would steal eggs from the nest, so we just hatched all the eggs in our incubator & let the geese rear them, from about 2-4 weeks of age - mainly due to our geese free ranging & predators such as rats in the shed, foxes & red kites / buzzards & us having a river, which they did fine, Ironically the gander used to take to them 1st. We always introduce them using a run as our adults can be very over enthusiastic to get to them & goslings to have a tendency to stress out & die, so we do this gradually as geese can be aggressive so it helps if to stop them attacking them - you won't know unless you try, ours have been very good at accepting young.

If your worried about birds being related, you can sell or swap the male or always buy eggs in, then you have a new bloodline & swap the gander then - we've eaten birds that are 3-4 & they tasted fine, Hatching in incubators you just need with ducks & geese to have the humidity around 40% & upto 50% for hatching temp around 37.5 C & make sure the eggs are turned twice a day, & candle eggs every few days or once a week in a dark place to check for bad eggs as a rotten one can spoil a whole batch or if you haven't got a candler I find in the last week with any eggs get a bowl of water & put the eggs in for 5-10 mins & the ones that move once the water has settled have something in as you will normally see them move quite a bit - not always but if your uncertain keep those eggs, I also never rear geese on heat, But I normally keep them in a warm shed fed on water / bread & milk for the 1st 1-7 days & have them on grass in the day, with a tray of water just not too deep, maybe a inch, & they thrive.

[Dans]

ok. Thanks guys.

I think we'll give it a go popping the eggs under one of the birds. I might try to get them laying inside first though as they currently lay outside so the eggs get quite dirty.

I read that they tend to lay between Feb and June so would giving them some eggs in May work or am I better off doing it in April?

Dans