We knew it was goose egg season but hadn’t found their nest. This morning it was visible. 7 eggs. Probably less than a week old.
I’m going to have to change dinner plans this week now that I have gose eggs available.
Goose egg facts:
Three times the size of a chicken egg.
Chicken eggs are 30% yolk.
Goose eggs are 50% yolk.
That means the yolk is the size of 1.5 chicken eggs.
This makes them perfect for dippy yolks with fresh baked bread.
Boil time for a firm white and liquid yolk is one minute per ounce, so probably 6 to 7 minutes. Have an ice bath ready when you take them out of the water because they will continue to cook until you open them up.
They are great for baking. But not ideal for omelets because of the higher yolk content.
You get about one egg per female goose every other day. We have three females. So we will have about 10 eggs per week until they stop just before summer.
If a snake gets to a goose egg before we do that snake probably won’t have to eat for a month.
Time to make some crusty bread, buy some salted butter, and I crazy. Maybe some anchovies too. Anchovy butter on crusty bread dipped in goose yolk is very tasty.
Interesting. Do you have a time limit to find them before an embryo forms, or are these unfertilized like chicken eggs?
Also do the moms get territorial around this time like the wild ones do?
They won’t start developing until the goose goes broody and sits on them. You want to find the best before that. If they go broody they stop laying so no more new eggs for a while. But more importantly you want to get the eggs before they go broody because trying to remove a goose from a nest is a lesson in asymmetrical warfare. You want to be gentle with them. They want to murder you.
Goose eggs kept at room temperature and unwashed are good for about four weeks. But the longer you wait the more thin the whites become making them harder to manage if you want a giant fried egg. But they are still fine for other applications.
If you draw silly faces on the eggs will they hatch into silly geese?
Only if you live in a universe where Lysenkoism works.
Are they any good for scrambled or devilled eggs?
Do they taste like chicken eggs?
Chicken, duck and geese eggs. All taste pretty much the same except for the larger yolk. Makes them richer.
I have considered making deviled eggs many a time, but at the same time a triple-sized deviled egg seems a little daunting. It’s one thing to eat. Half a dozen deviled eggs. It’s another thing to eat One that is larger than your mouth… and because of the extra yolk I’m thinking it’s going to require some flavorful acid too. Counterbalance all that richness…
Pet geese? Are they friendly? Even after you take their eggs?
They are friendly enough eight months of the year. Minimal hissing and no attempts to eat your legs the moment you turn around.
But for four months out of the year they are aggressive dinos that you can’t turn your back on. If they aren’t on the nest they aren’t too bad. If they are on the nest you will need to carefully pick them up without getting bit or beaten with their wings. And relocate them before you try to get the eggs.
We found a second nest today with five eggs in it. The goose was on it but wasn’t ready to fight me so she got up and wandered away on her own.
Most of the year it takes about four minutes to put away all the ducks, chickens and geese at night. But for the next few months it will take somewhere between four minutes and 20. Because now there may be one or more geese hiding on a nest somewhere on the property and we have to go find them because they can’t stay out all night due to predators. Which is another reason to find the eggs. If a raccoon or possum finds an egg before we do they will start coming back and that’s a danger to everyone.
But for four months out of the year they are aggressive dinos that you can’t turn your back on.
That’s the geese I know!
You took all the eggs?
You know If an animal can’t procreate it’ll be extinct, right?
We can only support so many geese on our acre. Domesticated geese are no risk of going extinct. If anything there’s too many of them. Just like cats and dogs. But you can’t fix a goose.
Fix yo damn pets
Oh, these are domesticated, ok then… the way you described it i thought they were wild
It is very illegal to mess with the nest of a wild bird. Even invasive ones.
If you take all eggs they’re less likely to lay there again. Do you have a decoy egg?
Once they have selected a safe and easy to access nest we typically take a permanent marker and mark an egg to be left behind to encourage them to continue using that spot. That egg gets tossed after a week or so and replaced.
We tried decoy eggs with chickens and found them to be ineffective and dangerous to snakes. But also stupidly expensive I made some decoy eggs out of cedar with the idea that chickens sense of smell is bad and snakes would avoid those. Three legged dog stole those. Maybe I will try making some goose sized cedar eggs.
You just can’t hide cedar eggs from a three legged dog!
Yeah. I’m hopeful that they build the nest inside their coop or outside of the fenced in portion of the yard.
