Meet Little Goose, the bird that was hatched from an egg bought at Penkridge Market.
Originally bound for the frying pan, the egg was instead popped into an incubator by goose fan Ian Tomlinson along with three other eggs.
After a few weeks, out hatched Little Goose to the delight of the 34-year-old school caretaker and his partner Denise. Ian said: “Denise has always wanted a goose so I borrowed an ancient incubator from a friend and hoped for the best.” But the odds were against the farmyard fowl.
Julie Clements, manager at St George’s Veterinary Group in St George’s Parade, Wolverhampton, said: “It’s very rare for this to happen.
“Eggs have to be kept at a constant temperature to hatch out and these were being sold in an open-air market and exposed for some time before being put into the incubator.”But bird expert Professor Graham Martin, from Birmingham University, said the chances of an egg hatching are greater the smaller the scale of production.
“The fact that these eggs were bought from a farmers’ market means that they probably came from a smallholder with just a few birds.
“On a small organic farm it’s likely that the female will have copulated at some time because the males and females are reared in a mixed group.
But normally the eggs are collected first thing in the morning and eaten before there’s any sign of an embryo.”
He added: “There’s no chance of a hen’s egg bought from a supermarket hatching out because they’re producing eggs commercially and never see a cockerel.”
The surgery recently treated Little Goose after she produced an egg of her own.
To prevent her from becoming lonely on her allotment near the couple’s home in Bentley, Walsall, Ian had bought her a female companion - but the goose turned out to be a gander, and nature took its course.
However the bird became eggbound and had to be encouraged to lay with an injection of calcium and oxytocin but the egg she produced was empty.
By Marion Brennan
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