We had one gosling hatch last night– the one fertile egg from a batch of ten!!!! It hatched under a broody who also has three duck eggs under her (laid into an established nest of duck eggs and so removed as the hatching date was different). The plan was she would have three ducklings and a gosling to raise but for some reason she deiced to reject the gosling and concentrate on the ducklings instead! Said gosling thus spent the morning in the Stanley getting warm and then we introduced him to his four older siblings (from 7th) with our fingers crossed they would accept him. They did (phew!) an dos we now have five goslings in the shower!!!
Once this latest one (a male) seems strong enough, we will move them all to the broody stall aviary. Dear old wonky girl is probably now as good as she will get (the vet (Graeme) pretty much confirmed this for us yesterday (he was here doing a meds chat so we got him to have a look!).
The next stage will be seeing if the adult geese would like to take them on – fingers crossed!!!
The photo by the way is of the first batch, now between 3 and 4 weeks old!!