Egg Candling

Sunday night I tried my hand at egg candling. This allows you to tell if the embryos are developing. Here is a website that gives some information on the process. Here are pictures on the same site, backyardchickens.com. It is a bit tricky, especially with the dark shelled eggs. I used an LED head lamp held with my hand cupped around it and sat the egg on top of my hand. The white shelled eggs were easy to read. The almond eggs were ok. The dark and speckled ones, I have no idea about! If I am correct, around 25% of my eggs are developing. That would be about 10 eggs. It is a bit disappointing, but a bit of a relief too. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with 40 chicks if they all hatched! 

I am going to try to candle the eggs again later in the week, somewhere around day 10 of development. Hopefully I will know what I am looking for and be able to tell more on the dark shelled eggs. They should be a little more developed too. It is neat to see a tiny embryo moving! 

I am also trying to get the incubator settled in after placing the automatic egg turner in it. The temp reading are varying. The egg turner is a relief! I am not quite as stressed out over the eggs. 

This is all exciting and definitely a learning experience. Oh, I also learned that the egg and sperm are combined in the egg before incubation. It just kind of sits there and waits until the hen sits on the eggs to start development. Eggs are pretty amazing!

Stay tuned! I'll do my best to keep you updated.