the unhatched egg

when we rescued the goslings  and put them and their mother into a chick run , we had one egg that hadn't hatched.
It was cool , but nothing to loose - so it went into the incubator.

and over the next 30 hours

the incubator isn't large enough to allow the gosling to stand , so the intermediate step, prior to re-introducing it back to the mother , now in the chick run  is to use the heat lamp,  and using a small plasic box, allow it to dry out and fluff up  over the next few hours.

Hail

So it was a cold night, with hail and freezing rain .

And the 4.30 trip round  identified oneof the lambs born yesterday who lying in one place, nbot following its mother and not feeding.  The  normal temperature for a lamb is about 39 deg C   and this one was at 37 degrees . The traditional treatment for this is to put the (live) lamb  in the AGA .We dont have an AGA , but the stove, lit at 530am , is the next best thing,

So once rewarmed , it went back out into the field with its mother and the other twin . 

but it's still not right - away from the mother, hunched and shivering. 

Clearly it would need to come in again , but taking it away from its mother for too long runs the risk of the mother rejecting it when the lamb is (eventually) put back in the field. 

So we decided to bring the mother and the two lambs into a pen in the shed. By this time it was 630 am so still cold, with wet grass and moisture in the air . 

Once inside and out of the weather it will warm up and start to feed . 

In the meantime , it needs a topup , as it has probably had nothing from the night before 

You can searhc for 'warming box' , but we decided to make our own.

And we constructed our own warming box . The 250W lamp had previously been in action with the turkey poults 

So a night in the shed, with a warming lamp and a mother shoudl hopefully see the lamb sorted , and as the weather is due to improve, back out in the fields tomorrow .