Gosling very late dead in shell, why?

[quackenboss]

I had a tiny duck egg and a goose egg incubating together since 9/25/17. The duckling hatched on 10/23 but no progress with the goose egg. I thought maybe the incubator temp was too low and it just needed time. This morning it passed the float test but a while ago I started worrying about it not being in a position to pip (the air cell was on the side, not large end) so I broke into the air cell and felt and saw no movement. As I suspected, the gosling had died. Looking at the photos, would anyone care to venture a guess whether it was malformed, or pushed its poor little guts out trying to get out?

 

[EarthboundEiniosaurus]

I don't have much experience beyond quail, but could it be the fact that the air sac was on the side makes me think it couldn't properly pip and that's why it didn't hatch.

 

[quackenboss]

I don't have much experience beyond quail, but could it be the fact that the air sac was on the side makes me think it couldn't properly pip and that's why it didn't hatch.

Thanks... I could just kick myself for not intervening sooner.

 

[Kimmyh51]

It looks like a hernia or something in the bottom pic on the right hand side. Would be interesting to know what a vet or someone qualified would say about that lump on the right...

 

[Kimmyh51]

In the first photo it looks really wet and sticky...but not in the second, not sure if it was taken out of the shell and might have dried off? But if it was sticky and wet when you broke the shell open it might have been a humidity problem? Might also just have been if it had died a day or two prior to the shell being opened.
It sucks when you lose them but to me it looks like something was wrong in the belly area so quite possibly nothing you could have done would have changed the outcome...

I have occasionally had a duckling that died in the shell under the mother and I have found it and opened it up and found it was breach or in an abnormal position. Never seen any with a hernia looking profusion like in the photo. So I wouldn’t imagine it would have pushed its guts out trying to exit the shell. More likely something didn’t form right and it either was not strong enough to pip, or the hernia or whatever that is maybe affected it’s ability to move and position itself properly to hatch? Or maybe just a whole bunch of stuff was wrong and caused the hernia looking protusion as well as wrong hatch position etc.

I have had ducklings who were breach who still managed to pip the external shell. In my experience a breach duckling can still pip thru the shell, the problem is that they cannot turn in the small end of the egg to do the ‘unzip’ part of the hatch so unless assisted they get stuck in the position they externally pip in and they can’t progress from there and need assistance - so you have to keep on checking their blood vessels and slowly remove the shell yourself as the vessels shrink, then often put them in a cup to let the last bit of yolk absorb.

If yours didn’t get to that external pip then that fact, combined with the abnormality in the abdomen, to me would indicate something else was wrong with the wee one that meant it prob couldn’t have been saved.

Shit just happens sometimes..