How to Care for Gosling Eggs

Proper care of the eggs will produce healthy, active goslings.

Caring for and hatching your own gosling, or baby goose, eggs is a rewarding aspect of raising geese. Chances of success are usually good, with proper care, from the collection to the hatching of the eggs. Geese generally lay from 20 to 50 eggs per season, so you'll have a good number of eggs to try, and incubators have become increasingly reliable, affordable and automatic. Hatching is easy and occurs within about 30 days.

Things You'll Need

• Incubator
• Hatching thermometer

Instructions

1. Gather eggs from geese or purchase eggs from a breeder. Select ones that are most likely fertile with no cracks, have a regular shape and size and are fresh (no more than four days old) to place in an incubator.

2. Prepare a still-air or forced-draft incubator. Make sure that proper temperature and humidity levels -- about 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit and 55 percent -- are maintained during the gestation period before placing the eggs.

3. Place the eggs in the incubator once the temperature and humidity levels are correct and stable.

4. Turn the eggs at least four to six times daily during the incubation period.

5. Stop turning eggs once "pipping" begins. This is when the gosling begins to crack the egg, usually around day 27.

6. Clean and disinfect the incubator and hatcher after each brood is produced.

Tips & Warnings

• Lightly sprinkle the eggs with water or dip them in lukewarm water for half a minute daily during the last half of the incubation period until hatched.

• After about a week of incubation, remove the egg from the incubator and "candle" the eggs, which means illuminating an egg from behind to check whether the embryo is visible. Remove infertile (no embryo) and cracked eggs as well as those with dead embryos.

• When selecting eggs for hatching, avoid ones that are very large or small, have cracked or thin shells, or are excessively misshapen.

• Do not wash dirty eggs or wipe them clean with a damp cloth. This removes the egg's protective coating and exposes it to disease organisms.

References

• Mississippi State University Extension Service: Care and Incubation of Hatching Eggs
• Oregon State University Extension: Hatching Small Numbers of Eggs
• University of Minnesota Extension: Raising Geese

Resources

• "The Book of Geese: A Complete Guide to Raising the Home Flock;" David Holderread; 1993