Exploding egg risk?

trifecta

Songster
7 Years
Mar 20, 2012
172
12
104
Laidley, QLD, Australia
Hello all, I'm here incubating my first set of "important" eggs- day 13. I have incubated and hatched several clutches using crappy incubators for a variety of school projects with wildly successful results... which I chalk up to the fact that they were "low risk" projects. Now, I have 24 shipped eggs.

I read the hatching guidelines on here. Overall, I think things are going pretty well. I have 12 Cornish, 11 BCM, and 1 arucana.

My question relates to candling- I'm not terribly confident in what I am seeing, but I suspect that several of the eggs are non-viable. There are no foul odors, cracks, etc at this point in time. What is the likelihood/risk that any non-viable eggs will explode? I keep seeing people list it as a possibility, but I'm trying to get a feeling for odds of this actually happening.

Where this is going... I'm hesitant to toss any eggs as I've never tried to candle before, and the darker eggs were definitely challenging with just a flash light. It was a bit of a challenge finding them here in Australia, so I'm trying to assess the risk of incorrectly tossing a viable embryo vs. having an exploding egg disaster.

Does it seem reasonable to keep monitoring for odor/cracks etc several times a day until lock down? I'm hoping that at lock down it will be stupidly obvious which are good and which are not- I was thinking of setting up some kind of divider for the bator for any that I was unsure about to check my candling skills.

I'll probably be out of internet range for the weekend, but any advice is greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
Natalie
 
Its Day 13 today. I candled them on Day 10- the Cornish are pretty reasonable to see. The others best I can tell have a dark spot.

I will recandle them tonight and look for progress. I just really, really don't want a stinky egg mess!
 
Have you marked the ones that you have seen life in? That's the first step. Then, I'd put a ? on the ones I was not sure of. Move those to one side so they are not mixed in with the others. (that way if you get a leaker, it won't contaminate the viable ones.) I've been incubating for 3 years in a home made bator. Have only had 1 stinker. Was able to id that one by following my nose. If I were you, I'd leave them all in unless you see something that tells you that an egglett has died. If you're into experimenting, and have the equipment, I've read that a viable egg that's toward the end of it's incubation will generate it's own heat. So if you had a very accurate thermometer, you might be able to get a surface temp after leaving the eggs out on the counter for about 10 minutes that would be a good indicator. An other thought is that you could make a candler. I rigged one with a table lamp, a 7W CFL bulb (you could go even higher) a tin can, and some tape. Be sure you do your candling in a very dark room.

All that being said, I've encountered one exploding egg in my life time. One was enough. I was in 6th grade, and was the student incubator tender. We were getting ready to shut it down, and I was oh so carefully removing 2 dead goose eggs to put in a coffee can for disposal. I picked up the second one to set it into the can, and it exploded in my hand! We had to evacuate the entire wing of the school for the rest of the day. It took days for me to get the stench out of my sinuses.
 
When candling if I'm unsure I mark the large end and place back in the incubator. In about 7 days you should be able to tell if there's been progress. With colored eggs it's sometimes difficult to tell what is inside, so a lot of candling is comparison. It has helped tremendously getting a brighter flashlight to put in my candling box, as now I can normally see movement.
 
If I have eggs that I can't see in (almost half of what's in my Bator right now) I leave them in until the end unless they are cracked, leaking, or smell.
 
Thank you for all your responses!

I only have 24 eggs in a 48 egg auto turn incubator, so I segregated them by row. Glad I didn't throw any out as one that I had put in the "likely bad" row appeared to have some development 2 days later... so it got moved into the "maybe" pile.

I am going to make a little cardboard divider for lockdown to segregate them.

I'll let you know how it turns out... lockdown on Wednesday!
 
Yes I didn't see anything forming until the other day I was going to throw them out but now they are all growing and doing good I hand turn them every three hours all day long
 

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