On Thurs. my husband came in with his sneaky look and began packing up one of the goose eggs in layers of paper towel. I asked what he was up to and he said he was going to put the egg in the nest box off Wally's chicken tractor. Wally raises these white leghorns who lay a big white egg, but one of our goose's eggs would make 2 or 3 of those. Off he went to work where he shared his plan with the other guys in the shop. Then snuck out and slipped the goose egg into the chicken tractor where he said there was a good clutch of eggs already.
He went back to work and waited for Wally to announce his find. Only Wally didn't check the eggs but on Friday a woman who works there did. She came running in holding the eggs and the goose egg, which had frozen and broke. She showed them to everyone else exclaiming how that probably hurt the chicken that did it. Hubby meanwhile didn't say anything as his intended target was Wally. He expected to hear about it that night or this weekend but no call came. When he went back on Monday he had pretty much forgotten about it.
On Tues Wally came in,....with pictures. It seems that the day after they found the big egg, a hen died. They all began to think that perhaps the strain of laying such a giant egg had killed her. You have to remember this is in a small town and in the town limits, there are no other poultry around and this is a closed chicken coop. The goose's egg is identical to those laid by his chickens, just much much larger. So they assumed that she had spent herself pushing out that monster egg, and they had the whole weekend to think about it.
They then took pictures of the body, the egg, the coop etc. anything that might explain this phenomenon. When they shared their "necropsy" photos with their friend who was privy to hubby's little switcharoo he started laughing and told them where the mystery egg came from. They were relieved that there hen wasn't killed by egg trauma but still the jury is out on what did her in. Also we now have a new customer who wants goose eggs. If it works that well maybe I'll start dropping a goose egg in all the neighbor's coops! I'm not sure that Lippy our gander approves of this business model.