[shetlandpaul]

the daughter has rescued a goose egg that had piped but was abandend. it was very cold but we hatched it it has splayed legs. i have put a plaster hobble on how long does it stay on. any other advice. would the chilling have caused any other problems. seems to shiver a lot. it was in the incubator overnight and is in the brooder now.

[jameslindsay]

No advice but good luck, hope all ends well.

[shetlandpaul]

update. the taping of the legs worked. its nearly walking normaly now. its adopted the daughter as mum. she is teaching it to eat and drink and taking it for swims in the bath. im hoping to re adopt it back in to its parents in the next week. im just hoping it works i really don't want another pet goose.

[sheila]

My neighbour "Bob the goose" says tie the legs together for a few day and the legs will be o.k. he specialises in toulouse geese. bloody great big things and he says splayed legs are common.
He is currently awaiting a delivery of some South african whites which are supposed to be even bigger.

[shetlandpaul]

it now cheaps for its foster mum and climbs on her and nibbles her ear. the legs are back to normal if still a little weaker than the others. in the past i would have been tempted to kill a young bird with very badly splayed legs this ones were at nearly90 degrees. so i will be using this again if there are any more. now the question is will it go back with its family. it never saw its mum or dad.

[jameslindsay]

I would think that it would. I have 2 four week old Chinese geese that have just been adopted by my Roman male goose and boy is he protective. It is strange because any time in the past I have put ducklings out he has chased them then ignored them but with these 2 he has became mum and dad to them.

[doganjo]

Hopefully it'll keep him occupied when I come up tomorrow then

[trefnantbach]

we hatched out three embden goslings over the week end. The first one took 36 hours from pipping but the other two were much faster. In the end I intervened and gradually chipped pieces of shell off round the hole but it was the tough membrane under the shell that was stopping it from emerging - it just couldn't get through it, so in the end I gave it a sort of cesarian otherwise it would have died - it was getting progressively weaker. Anyway eventually after cutting enough of the membrane and shell it climbed out but was very weak - unable to lift its head at all and both legs were splayed on either sides and falling to sleep in the shallow water trough and crumb tray. We put it in the brooder under the lamp with the others and after some intensive care to encourage it to feed and drink it seemed to fluff up and gain some strength. We were about to tie its legs together but noticed that the other two were struggling a bit and moving about a bit jerkily and thought that they  were having a problem getting a grip with the wood shavings and slippy cardboard on the floor of the box. We then put a piece of old carpet on the floor of the box and hey presto 24 hours later we could hardly see the difference between all three. I read later that a common cause of leg splaying is slippy surfaces emphasised by weakness. So a non-slip surface and helping weak ones to feed and drink seems to do the trick thus leg tying may not be necessary.

[shetlandpaul]

if you don't correct the legs it damages the hip joints. we had the same problem so used a towel.

[apple and sauce]

I hatched 4 Embden goslings and 1 had splayed legs.I used tape and string to bring them more together.It managed to stand and walk around ins hobbles.After a couple of days this was removed.They are now 4 weeks and its impossible to tell which one it was.