We have successfully incubated Uncle Waldo and Abigail’s first set of eggs!  Four goslings were set to hatch today, and they all made it out of the shell, although one needed a little help. One more will hatch in two days, we hope.

Two days ago I noticed when I candled their eggs that they had internally pipped into the air cell. Yesterday evening when I got home from work they had all started to externally pip through the shell:

The penciled-in cross shows where the air cell dipped down to:

This morning they had enlarged their pip holes quite a bit.

First one out!

It’s lonely being the first one out, so she cuddled around her sibling’s egg to take a nap while waiting:

They slowly worked their egg tooth around in a circle to create a hinge at the top of the blunt end of the egg:

One little head poking out of an egg:

The empty egg shell:

This little guy just wasn’t making much progress so we gingerly began to crack away little bits of the eggshell.  I put him back in the incubator like this and he made the rest of the trip out by himself:

We made a video of one popping out of the shell:

Everyone is now snug in the brooder:

The two girls have the dark grey bills; the boys have pink bills.