Our first two goslings hatched and are out and about. The geese tend to do communal nesting and mothering, so two adults were escorting the first two goslings around while a mama is still sitting on eggs. This is from the second mama that started setting. The first mama is well overdue and we are tempted to just take her off and dispose of the eggs, but fear that maybe some were laid later and may in fact make it. Doubtful. The communal nesting isn’t great – sometimes the eggs are between them rather than under them. We even have a goose and a muscovy “sharing” a nest. I don’t expect this to be successful on two points. First, the length of incubation is different, and second, I suspect that once any hatch there will be a maternal battle.
The muscovy babies have at least doubled in size in their first week. They are bug-eating machines. Great fun to watch. We thought they were still too small to climb up into the wading pool, but they are in the wood duck family and have sharp toenails for climbing. I don’t know how they could get any purchase on the plastic though. Maybe they just propelled themselves over. Fortunately I was around the house washing and packing and heard the distress calls. Seven very water-logged babies were about to drown. They could get in but not get out. We knew it was a danger because we lost some this way the first year we had them. I just thought we had a few more days before we needed to worry. We have them fenced away from the wading pool, but they are small enough to scoot through the fence. So much to the distress of the adult geese and ducks, the wading pool is empty.
