Can you candle too often?

[fortkevin10]

This is my first time incubating eggs and I have a candler. How often should I be candling to make sure the progress is good? And is it a good idea to candle everyday, or is that too much? Thanks

 

[gamebirdsonly]

I would only candle a week in then at two weeks and one more time 3 days before they hatch. I f you candle to much your letting out the humidty and heat ever time you open the incubator. Good luck with your Hatch

 

[HershelMS]

It has been suggested that you only candle twice. It is not so much the "candling" as it is the "handling" that can cause problems.
Eggs require a consistent temperature from setting, through embryotic development, right up to hatching. alot of moving around, temperature and humidity changes can impact the eggs chances of hatching negatively. I usually candle once about 6 days after
the egg goes into the incubator to see if i have embryo developing. If i see no development, i mark it and set it aside to check again
after 10 days in. if no embryo development, i dispose of the egg. again,about day 17 or so, i candle again just to check growth.
Hope this was helpful... Im a noob to Backyard Chickens, but have been raising chickens since i was 7 (my grandmother put
me in 4H)... I am now 45... so that is a pretty long time ...

 

[fortkevin10]

Thank you! That definitely helps!

 

[HershelMS]

You are welcome. Another reason I do not candle very often is i have gotten old and clumsy haha...
fewer times touching the eggs means less likely to drop one. Funny story...

I have two incubators. One i have a rotator in it to turn my eggs for me (as i am old and lazy too) that is set to 99.5 degrees 45% humidity... The other incubator is a still air set to 100.5 degrees 65% humidity for finishing the hatch... I was two days late on moving the eggs from the first incubator to the hatch incubator because we were out of town for the weekend... so... i was in a hurry... Hurry, old, and clumsy do not make good partners... i had three eggs in one hand trying to hurry and get them moved to the hatch incubator... one rolls out of my hand so i try to grab for it and drop the other two... all three crack on the rubber mat in my hatch area... all three immediately start to peep... all three, before i can bend down to pick up the dropped eggs start to wabble all over the mat... i gently pick up all three expecting the worst but i put them in the incubator to try as quickly as possible... to make a long story short... all three of them are third year layers...

 

[DeckDuck]

Quote:
Wow! That is a really interesting story. Those must have been a tense couple of moments.

 

[roostereggs]

Probably...but we just did the NYE hatch-a-long and did a LOT of candling. It was an educational experience for our family, and we loved seeing the progress of the chicks developing day to day. I only candled ALL of them 3 times (days 10, 14, and 18)...and the days in between the others would take turns by incubator row so we could see daily growth. We had 19 of 29 hatch and most of them were shipped, so ours did fine with the handling.

Just make sure to wash your hands first! Also, they can tolerate the lower temps briefly...it is no different than mama hen getting off the nest to eat/drink/etc. Some incubators even have a daily cool-down mode. It is the temp spikes that cause more problems than temps going lower. Also, once you put them in lockdown, stop candling because that is when humidity is most important.