Help. Goose eggs too thick shell to candle?

Some of the goose eggs look as expected from the picture in the book, but others are just too opaque to see.  Or are those the bad ones?  Or are the shells just too thick to see through?

The ones I suspect are good have a red glow and probably a mass.  Some have what looks like big blood vessels or something as well.

The opaque ones have an air bubble and blackness.  Are they bad?

I don't have any experience with goose eggs, but I've heard of people using two light sources for some other types of eggs to get a better view. One on the end and one on the side. I wonder if that would give you more insight into the egg? (no pun intended).

Matt McSpadden wrote:I don't have any experience with goose eggs, but I've heard of people using two light sources for some other types of eggs to get a better view. One on the end and one on the side. I wonder if that would give you more insight into the egg? (no pun intended).

I'll give it a try.  Good idea.

r ranson wrote:The ones I suspect are good have a red glow and probably a mass.  Some have what looks like big blood vessels or something as well.

The opaque ones have an air bubble and blackness.  Are they bad?

If the eggs have all been incubated approximately the same length of time, you are probably right from my experience.

I use a powerful, narrow beam flashlight with a bit of old rubber inner tube sticking out a bit over the end to help mate the light to the egg. (Available from a local bike shop - they usually will give a retired, holey inner tube to you for free.)

The eggs were layed within 5 days of eachother, we wiped them as directed and put them in the fancy new incubator with rollers.  Another egg added 12 hours after the first.  So one egg is 12 hours behind the rest.

Three geese were playing with that nest, and it looks like two different breeds of goose eggs (long narrow, wide and huge).

It's been nearly a month and the new incubator insists we remove the bad ones yesterday.  6 look reddish and with an obvious lump.  Three look black with an air bubble.

I don't fancy having an egg explode in the house.  But they don't say what to look for.  Never incubated goose eggs before.  But last year the geese didn't hatch any, so...?help.

It would be helpful to know where these eggs are.

This isn't exactly your question, but:
I incubate in a Styrofoam incubator in a bathroom with the door closed to help contain and moderate the temperature/heat (when I'm not using a Muscovy to do the job for me).
If I open the door and my nose smells nasty, I know there's a rotten egg in the incubator.
The smell can be quite subtle, and I will pick up each egg and sniff closely and carefully.
I will still candle them. Live goslings move if they're awake, but it may take time to see it, and it depends, again, on the days of incubation. Things that you can see near the beginning, will disappear - like the blood vessels. They're best seen around days 5 to 8 if I recall correctly. I try not to mess with the incubator more than necessary and do so quickly, although goose eggs supposedly benefit from cooling off a bit (mom leaving the nest for periods is normal for geese), but they seem to do so based on some internal clock - constant incubation near the beginning, off the nest at times during the middle, then glued again closer to the expected hatch date.

Eggs are like milk, they always smell bad to me,even when good.  I can't tell the difference.

This is a fancy new incubator we bought as it bosses us about and tells us the humidity and beeps louder than the carbon monoxide alarm when it wants us to do something.

It also doesn't want us to open except for candling.

I think we will just take the three black ones out and hope that's the right path.

And I completely agree, ducks are way better at this than machines, but mine are wise and kick out the giant goose eggs.

How long have the eggs been in the incubator? At about a week, you should be able to see a few blood vessels clearly, emanating from a dark spot. If there is black, and especially if the black sloshes around in the egg, it is dead and rotting. I'm able to candle eggs with the flashlight on my iPhone.

The second post in this string (https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/goose-egg-hatching-guide.1620753/) has the best guide to goose egg incubation I've found. It includes good pictures at each stage.

Most of a month in the incubator so far.  Earliest hatch date is Tuesday.

The first candle date was about 10 days ago, but we couldn't see any difference in the eggs at all.  The shells our geese make are very thick, too thick to crack open on the edge of a bowl.  So we figured we wouldn't be able to see.

But this time, there is a difference between the reddish ones and the dark ones.

But we don't want to toss the wrong ones.

In that case, you should be able to see little goslings moving (a twitch movement) inside the eggs. Geese are harder to candle than ducks or chickens, but you should still be able to see if your light is bright enough. Usually when I see dead eggs at that stage, the material inside the egg moves around freely as you tilt the egg. It is very runny, nasty stuff. If what you see generally stays in place as you tilt the egg, that may be a good sign. In the future, I would candle after one week. Usually those that are alive at that stage continue to grow to hatch or nearly hatch, in my experience.

Finally found one to measure.

The shell thickness is just over 2mm.  Some are thicker.

Some of the eggs are singing.

Maybe that's why we can't see in them?  They are a week early

r ranson wrote:Some of the eggs are singing.

Maybe that's why we can't see in them?  They are a week early

Absolutely - that's why luckily I can use the smell test to help decide. At some point they're so tight in that shell, it's really hard to see any movement.

Do you have some way to record some of your geese making geesie noises - the happy, chatting sort of noises as opposed to the Sky is Falling sort of noises? I have played those noises for short periods several times a day for incubator birds pre and post hatch in the past. I think I read somewhere that hearing mom's voice encourages them to hatch.

We generally do music.  But that's a great idea, espe and at night.

I've had geese where I had to spend the first few nights saying boop every few seconds.  I wish I had thought to get a recording of happy geese.

Hatching.  First made it.

The bottom is usually in a Styrofoam sleeve but we took it off and have clearish plastic to watch the hatching

How many made it? Are they doing OK?

2 so far.

Hatch day is supposed to be tomorrow but no sign or sound of life in the rest.

This is so exciting! I haven't yet made a decision about incubating goose eggs, so it's probably not happening this year. The geese have made a communal nest with (at last count) 14 eggs in it. We'll see if anyone gets around to brooding. All three of the geese are doing great at laying, so I'm happy about that.

Yes, I would say that the red blobs are gooses. Depending on how old the dark blobs are (late in incubation, were they red earlier?) they might be gooses.

Last year, when I was incubating goose eggs before the incubator went wacky and cooked them all (106F for at least 3 hours), I was candling fairly frequently. I can also smell that off-scent in eggs, and use that when I'm sorting chicken eggs, double checking by candling. I noticed that I needed a very dark room and bright light for the goose eggs, and it was harder to track - so I did the frequent candling because learning is essential.

The tip about the happy goose noises is a good one. I'll have to see what I can do about that.
I'm glad you have goslings hatching. That's so very exciting.