Amber The Miracle Gosling

We thought we should share this lovely story from one of our clients about their wonderful surprise.

Today we brought our youngest ever member of the family to Park Veterinary Hospital. S/he was 22 hours old when we came in for a consultation!

46 days ago one of our female geese went broody; we tried in vain to ‘break’ the condition by taking her off the nest she had built and making her go back outside with the rest of the little flock. However, she just prowled round the house and garden, shouting with anger and grief and pecking at whatever windows she could get at. After 45 minutes we gave in as we could not bear to cause her such distress and let her return to her nest.

We only have a few geese – three females and one gander - just for their eggs and as pets (they also make great ‘guarddogs’), but we really do not want or need any more. Therefore we raided the fridge and took out the oldest egg which was four weeks old, right from the coldest part of the fridge, at the very bottom, and gave this to the broody goose to sit on. No way could this egg be viable in our opinion, so she could sit and we could be sure of NO MORE GEESE.

A goose usually sits for about 28-34 days before the eggs hatch, depending on species. This egg was from a Chinese goose and their eggs tend to the longest incubation period, so we were expecting 35 days give or take one or two.

By day 40 she was still sitting tight but we were sure the egg must have gone ‘off’ and it was time to throw it out and make her give up her vigil: I picked up the egg, gently as I did not want an old, toxic egg exploding all over me, ready to take it out to the rubbish. But it felt heavier than I expected: I gave it a tiny shake to see if the contents were liquid, which is what I would expect of a bad egg. But no symptomatic swishing sound. In fact nothing at all. I hovered and havered and finally thought, “Oh well, give it a couple more days just to be on the safe side”.

On day 45 I opened the goose run to let them out and what did I see? This tiny little head peeping out from under the broody goose.

My first thoughts were, “Oh, how sweet. How thrilling. A baby around the place.”

My second made my blood run cold, “What if I had thrown the egg out, and a perfectly viable baby goose had died slowly in its egg, or had hatched in the warm weather to find no-one to look after it or feed it.”

But our story has a happy ending. A lovely, healthy young gosling did appear, 45 days after the mother began sitting. This must be some kind of record.

And the only reason for our visit to Park Veterinary Hospital today was that the new, inexperienced mother goose had not noticed that her baby had fallen outside her nest and could not climb back to sit underneath her. It had become chilled during the evening and early night, and when I discovered the fact at 11.00 pm it was shivering and chilled. I put it in an incubator for the night expecting the worst, but it was lonely and cried. So I did what I have done before for very young or fragile baby chicks and ducks, put into practice what an old hand at poultry rearing told me many years ago: I slept with it sitting on my shoulder just where my neck meets the shoulder. The carotid artery runs up the neck here and makes for both a comforting pulse sound and also gives out heat. At this age no poult produces ‘poop’ so it is very clean.

Apart from making sure I did not squash it, which means one only sleeps very lightly, and answering its occasional questioning cheeps, we had an uneventful night. But I did notice that it sneezed frequently and every breath it took produced a crackling noise. Also one eye was half shut.

I feared that a cold was already developing which, at such a tender age, can kill a chick extremely fast. So we came straight over to the Vet first thing to have it checked over and given some antibiotic.

During the day it has seemed bright and cheerful and a bit better, so I am hoping that in a few days it will be fine. But from now on, it will sleep in the incubator at night with a cuddly toy for company and with its mum during the day, just to avoid any more mishaps.

Thanks to Park Veterinary Hospital for squeezing us in so fast, thereby preventing a very sad demise. Because, although we did not want any more geese, it is such a little darling!!  

And we have named it Amber, hoping it will prove to be female. Our miracle gosling.

Posted 13th August 2014