Locked in an Egg

Acting against my better judgement to save a weak bird

Another incubated goose egg pipped (the bird inside cracked through preparing to hatch). But after two days they remained locked inside the egg. At this stage the bird is exhausted. With the prolonged exposure to air the shell membrane is drying, fusing to the unhatched bird and gluing them to what was once their sanctuary. Without intervention the egg will soon become their tomb.

Even with help, they might not be a healthy bird after leaving the shell. It's reasonable to assume that if they're not strong enough to hatch, they're not strong enough period. But I've lost enough birds (three chickens) the past couple weeks — I'd like to add one to the flock.

I found a video of a gentleman demonstrating how to crack a gosling out of their shell. I copied his technique and the bird was freed. After a day recovering, the bird seems fine. Until the new goose leaves our farm it'll be a life of green grass and joyful honking.

21 eggs in various stages of incubation are left to go.

Other sensory experiences on and off the farm:

My dad is helping us make the poultry coops easier to move. A hitch on the mower and some new wheel mechanisms should do it. To get supplies, we rode to the scrap yard in his van. In the van, wolf piss was spilled earlier in the day. On the plus side, it was only 90 degrees.

The smell of hot wolf piss is as bad as Black Locust blooms are good. Now's the time to sniff them (in our area), and only for about a week. Find them, sniff them, and (if you know them and yourself well) eat them.

This past weekend was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. We are continuing a multi-year experiment to inform our possible future wool production. We are looking at sheep, talking to farmers, and knitting with yarns made from the sheep. A fellow knitter friend joined us for the weekend and brought us their own hand-spun yarn — it's glorious. Maren will take the gift and I purchased my own skein of hand-spun.

Two skeins of hand-spun yarn. On the left is from our friend Olivia and the right is a skein of Rosza Yarns purchased from a vendor at the MD Sheep and Wool Festival

Maren taking out the buttercups because they don’t feed geese.