setting eggs tomorrow.... 3-21-12 who wants to join? - Page 10

Day 14 for me, candled tonight.  This morning I knew I should have left it alone, but I had to go and fiddle with the thermostat Came home tonight and the temp. was 104 (according to the crappy thermometer that came with the incubator, the one that came with my hygrometer still said about 102, but it's hard for me to read accurately and I swear that was what it said this morning).  It was 101-102 this morning, and I had tried to adjust the thermostat down (because we were supposed to have another warm day and I was worried about the temp rising over the course of the day), not up!  I'm sure everyone can imagine the immense relief I felt when I candled the second egg and saw movement!   Out of 19 eggs, I saw movement in 15 of them.  Two I didn't really see any movement, but they were hard to see into and seem to be on track developmentally (at least in as far as what I can't see in them anymore).  Two of the eggs I think are quitters.  One seems just a bit behind in development, and the other I can see a lot more light through than all the rest of the eggs and I don't really see veins anymore so I'm almost 100% sure that one is a quitter.

I built myself a candling box.  I think there was a link earlier in this thread that had plans for making one, which I followed, successfully. Tired of not being able to see my eggs easily, I used a 100w flood light bulb inside my box. After candling about 25 of my eggs, I started getting wisps of smoke out of my box.  Seems the light bulb was heating the inside of the box enough to cause it to smoke - LOL! (had the scent of wood burning )  I may need to step back to a regular 100w bulb.......but I could see inside all of my eggs really well! 

Wade

I recandled my eggs today, just to make sure of the two that looked like duds. Sure enough they still have no development, so I have 5 call eggs that are growing  I still have 11 more days to go with them, why do duck eggs have to take so long  And I already have another batch of eggs lined up to go in the bator as soon as these hatch. Next are Coturnix Quail! I think I am officially addicted to hatching, just don't tell my DH

I love candling. I do it way too much. I'm sure that one of these days, I'll end up breaking something, but so far, it hasn't happened. I had the incubator and eggs at my son's preschool the first 10 days of incubation, which made it very easy to not candle.  I took them home for spring break (the kids were going to be out of school for a total of 9 days), and of course candled them within an hour.

I just use a small LED flashlight and my hand. Like this:

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I can't remember if I told you guys or not, but one of my BCM eggs seemed very far behind the others. So, a couple days ago, I finally determined it to be a quitter, and took it out. Being insatiably curious, I put it in a ziploc bag and cracked it open. Sure enough, it had quit around 7 days along. The others are all doing really well. I think I'll candle one more time as I lock down, but at this point, it's just not as interesting- they take up too much space.