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Broody Goose Sitting on Duck Egg!!

 
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I have one goose who is hell-bent on escaping from the orchard and sitting on a nest she's made under a hedge. I can only assume that she's broody. We don't have a gander and in fact they have finished laying for the year anyway (maybe one a fortnight in total from the 6 we have). She has a Muscovy duck egg under her at the moment (fertilised) that our little Marita kindly laid there when she got off for a drink and a feed. So the question is... will a goose hatch out a duck egg and if so, what will happen when it turns out to be a duck not a goose?
 
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Location: NC (northern piedmont)
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Best guess (key word guess) is she won't even notice. Mamas love their young no matter what they look like.
 
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Location: SW Ontario, Canada
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My goose does this all the time, likes to hatch out our muscovy ducklings. She won't care she will take care of it no probem. The only issue you might have if she is a larger goose is that she can actualy break the egg.
 
Alison Thomas
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It's Muscovy eggs that she's on actually (3 now). And she's not a big goose by geese standards I don't think, but bigger than a Muscovy obviously.

Further questions... she gets off once a day for about 1.5 hrs - yesterday for 2hrs, I thought she'd given up! It's not cold here but it's not 35C either. The broody hens didn't stay away for that long.
When (if) they hatch, can she just go back in with the flock up in the orchard? They all happily go into the Goose Hoose at night and are shut in to prevent fox attacks but would the little ducklings be too small to go in with 6 adult geese, their 'mother' being one of them?
 
Misty Rayne
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Location: SW Ontario, Canada
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our goose does that too, I thought for sure the eggs wouldn't hatch but hatch they did! Just to be safe I would maybe wait until the ducklings are about a week old and then let them go up to the orchard. Our guys are able to all run free here they come and go out of the barn down to the pond as they choose. None of the other geese ever even looked at the goose with the ducklings or for that matter the ducks with ducklings.
 
Alison Thomas
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Ok I'll stop fretting - thanks Misty. And I'm sure that she'll be happy to proudly display her little ones at our patio window (that's their favourite place when they're out of the orchard) for a week or so I'll let you know how we get on.
 
Alison Thomas
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Well, they've hatched in the last 24hrs but sadly I think she has crushed them or they've died of heat exhaustion (yesterday was 37C / 99F in the shade and today not much cooler). I'm so sad - they are all lovely and fluffy and yellow/black and Mummy Goose just doesn't want to leave them for more than 5 mins to get something to drink and eat (that's when I noticed the fluffiness but no movement).
 
Misty Rayne
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Ah too bad sorry to hear about that, I hate when stuff like that happens they work so hard!
 
We can fix it! We just need some baling wire, some WD-40, a bit of duct tape and this tiny ad:
the permaculture bootcamp in winter (plus half-assed holidays)
https://permies.com/t/149839/permaculture-projects/permaculture-bootcamp-winter-assed-holidays
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