It is soooo hot and extremely uncomfortable; yip, it’s dry season, and it is really awful.  That was a complaint and it still doesn’t make me feel better to say it.  I want to be sealed in a cool bubble during this season! 😉

Anyway, this post is about geese again; about a week ago, an egg pipped and we awaited the hatching of a brand new gosling.  From past experience, it takes between 24 to 48 hours for a goosie to peck through the entire circumference of the shell in order to emerge.  We waited a fair bit…probably about 36 hours and we observed that it had only pecked through about a quarter of the whole round.  He was stuck in the shell because the gelatin had congealed and dried out (from the hot weather) preventing him from breaking out of the shell.  He was exhausted and could not move at all.

Well what did we do?  We performed an emergency goosie shell evacuation (late at night no less!!  Emergencies are always late night!!).  Gnome performed the calculated incision into the shell and removed the stuck goosie; we then had to bathe it in a 40C bath to try to rub all the stuck gelatin that was all over its eyes, wings and feet.  The goose was an Embden…this is our first white feathered goosie so all the more reason to save the baby!!

For five days, we attended to this little one hoping that it will stay alive.  It caught pneumonia and I had to hand feed it the last few days.  It was so weak that it couldn’t stand but we persisted because he continuously tried to stand up and mobilise which showed he possessed the will to live.  Anyway, the last few days, he started going downhill and was no longer able to swallow.  Alas, the poor thing passed away yesterday.

Well, what is the lesson?  In the books and the Internet, the writers usually state that the independent emergence of a hatchling out of a shell should be the first test of a healthy, strong individual.  The in-ability of a goosie (or any other bird) to get out of its shell is an indication of physical weakness and possibly ongoing health problems into adult-hood.  That’s not a good start!  So, we had a philosophical talk about it afterwards and decided that we are not going to do any-more emergency hatching manoeuvres.  We should be practical and our time is better spent raising healthy, strong birds.  🙂  Anyway, Rest in Peace little one.