Many times I had visited Lorne Cameron’s chick hatchery in Albany. I was fascinated with the hatching process of day old chicks, but my conscience would not allow me to compete with Lorne in the chicken business. I had to ﬁnd another species. In my search I discovered there was very little known about artiﬁcial incubation of goose eggs. There loomed my challenge, and a challenge it proved to be.

To get in to the hatching business I needed several adult females and, of course, a male. I was lucky; later I questioned my good fortune! In the spring of 1952, I borrowed $15.00 and bought two geese and a gander. Seven eggs came with the deal. I was so pleased with my new family, I did all that I could to make them comfortable. But apparently the birds did not like their new owner or new quarters. They went on strike, no more eggs! Needless to say, I was very disappointed. But all was not lost. I did have one lady set and from the seven original eggs she produced three beautiful goslings. In my excitement, I thought I could do a better job of looking after the new babes so I brought them into the kitchen and put them under the kitchen stove in a snug box. There I could admire them while doing household chores. That was a mistake. Not thinking of the goslings, I decided to prepare one of Chuck’s favourites for dinner, homemade French fries. To heat the fat, I stoked the ﬁre with hardwood edgings from the mill. They made a quick, hot ﬁre for good fries. It was not until we ﬁnished dinner that I thought of my goslings. When I pulled out the box, you guessed it, they were cooked! And still nine months until Christmas.

I did not have the brains of a goose, I thought, but I was determined to continue and continue I did. My ﬂock grew slowly and steadily until one spring I discovered a serious problem. My females could not hatch all the eggs they had laid. I had to ﬁnd some surrogate mothers. The race was on. I nearly drove my husband crazy. We were all over the Island on barely passable roads in search of hens. Often, by the time we got the Moody hens home, they would be either scared or shaken out of their maternal mood. They would refuse to set on the clutch of goose eggs that I had arranged for them. In an effort to convince them, I tried covering them, but they still wouldn’t set. I did everything but nail their feet to the bottom of the nest. It was now time to look into artiﬁcial hatching.

I was able to get several abandoned kerosene incubators from basements and attics. People were only too glad to get rid of them, and I was quite happy to set them up in my basement. I felt anything would be better than travelling over muddy, spring roads in search of hens. Chuck agreed. My next two springs were spent trimming wicks, turning, candling, sprinkling, and ﬂoating the eggs and counting the live goslings kicking in the shells. What a ﬂock I was going to have! But, thirty days came and went, then thirty two days and to my disappointment most of the birds inside decided they were better off where they were. My ﬂock was still not what I had hoped it would be but my determination