PSA for anyone who has ever considered keeping geese, ducks, chickens or other fowl to have them breed

See these glorious bastards? The two on the left (daughter background, mom foreground) are our breeders.

Now, the daughter at the back (Roast is her name) had one gosling hatch out of her nest near-on two weeks ago. Thing is, I couldn't find my marker and kept forgetting to buy one, so I couldn't mark eggs with the dates they were laid on as I went to fetch eggs from said nests; we eat about half the eggs the geese might lay and leave the rest to hatch, so dating them can be kinda important as in this scenario.

Why that's a problem is because I couldn't remember when the rest of the eggs were laid. At all.
So she finally abandoned her nest this evening since one of the 8 remaining in it –one of which was abandoned by Mommo (Frieda) but didn't smell off nor show any signs of being unfertilized when candling.

I tried relocating the 3/8 eggs from the clutch to an artificial nest next to where Roast's now-smelly nest was, but she wasn't having any of it. She acknowledged the eggs in both Frieda's old nest and in the artificial nest, but screw sitting on the things any longer, it's time to be FREE! Also I imagine she's kinda hungry by now...

So. I had three eggs she wasn't going to sit on which looked fine when candling and didn't smell off through the shell.

I took 'em to the kitchen. I prepared myself with gloves and facial coverings.

I lightly tapped at the 'empty' end of the first egg to crack the shell, then *POP*

Today I think I was the luckiest son of a bitch in this entire town (Napier, South Africa - population approx 5.5k); none of the... stuff went anywhere but in the basin and despite feeling something brush the back of my head I could find no trace of anything anywhere other'n in said basin. I'm glad I can hold my breath for reasonably long and that I already had a plan in my head for dealing with this scenario.

My take-away of the situation is: if you can't tell when eggs were laid and more importantly the things have been abandoned by their mom, even if she's still an inexperienced brooder, don't try to be clever by checking out any of the abandoned eggs. She left 'em for a reason. Don't do it. Just don't.

tl;dr nearly got rotten goose egg all over me by thinking I might be able to help three goslings hatch after the mom abandoned a nearly-full nest - PSA is to not try and do this. Throw the eggs away.

Cat tax.