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Why would Canadian geese lay eggs directly into water? (1 Viewer)

MarkGelbart

Well-known member
I was walking around a suburban 30 acre lake near Augusta, Georgia yesterday. There is an overpopulation of Canadian geese living year round on this body of water. I found 3 goose eggs in shallow water.

I did an admittedly stupid thing--I hard boiled one of them and ate it. It has been 7 hours and I haven't gotten sick yet.

I determined that the egg was probably still good because it sank in a pot of water. If the egg was bad, the CO2 would have caused it to float. I opted to hard boil it because the lake has high amounts of ecoli from the geese droppings and for sure there was bacteria on the egg shell.

It was a good egg, noticeably bigger than extra large chicken eggs at the grocery store. It had a large rich yolk. The taste matched that of the best store bought eggs.

However, it was a stupid gamble. Food poisoning can cause kidney failure and lifelong health problems.

What I can't understand is why the eggs were in the water. I'm guessing that it was too early to nest and the eggs just came out of the goose unexpectedly. Or someone found them, thought there were too many geese, and threw them in the water.

Anybody know why geese would lay eggs directly in water?

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http://markgelbart.wordpress.com
 
I was walking around a suburban 30 acre lake near Augusta, Georgia yesterday. There is an overpopulation of Canadian geese living year round on this body of water. I found 3 goose eggs in shallow water. . . .

. . .I hard boiled one of them and ate it . . .

Anybody know why geese would lay eggs directly in water?http://markgelbart.wordpress.com

They wouldn’t. The water must have risen or somebody must have put them there. Nice to know that one of them at least didn’t go to waste.
 
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Possible cases:
- Rival goose (or a human vandal) thrown eggs out of nest.
- Young female started laying eggs without nest (possibly shortage of nesting places, or nesting instinct had not fully developed).
- Female was disturbed or nest destroyed just before laying, and it had to lay eggs forming inside her in water. After some thinking: birds lay normally one egg per 24-48 hours, so this explanation for 3 eggs is not too likely.

I personally would not eat any wild bird or eggs from suburban places, even legal and no harm to birds. Risk of contamination with bacteria or chemicals is too big. When I see on how incredibly polluted yuck geese will happily dabble...
 
I personally would not eat any wild bird or eggs from suburban places, even legal and no harm to birds. Risk of contamination with bacteria or chemicals is too big. When I see on how incredibly polluted yuck geese will happily dabble...

..and maybe the eggs could have traces of recycled antibiotics...
 
Well folks you are pretty poorly informed. Almost all eggs sold in the USA ans Canada are from chickens fed antibiotics to increase production and E Coli is rife. The Egg and Chicken meat is an industrialized operation controlled by some very nasty characters.
Although Wild bird eggs are from bird's not directly fed antibiotics they will drink the same water as we pollute with hormones and antibiotics.
I was born in Scotland we used to gather eggs every spring then the grenny animal lovers started to buy land and ban egg gathering the bird population fell dramatically.
Egg gathering had been widespread for millenia both the people and the bird population were well adjusted to the fact that humans could eat the first laying.
Serious carnivorous Birds such as the Black backed Gull had their eggs gathered mercilessly od pierced with a needle to try to eliminate them so they laid on the cliffs and other inaccessible places.
The result of the interference in this old age practice meant chicks hatched too soon and die of exposure and the carnivores population exploded.
 
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