*CHICKS are HERE!!!* Egg Candling Pics: Progression Though Incubation

[ZooMummzy]

I am like a kid waiting for Christmas! It has been so exciting for me working with silkiechicken on this project. This is my first hatch ever. I am hopefully going to be a Grandmommie if all goes well. The bummer is that I will miss the actual hatch because I will be back in Ohio at the Ohio National Poultry Show!

Thanks for starting this thread and for hatching my baby's babies!

 

[chickenlady81]

great post and pictures! I have some eggs on day 7 tomorrow..I candled them tonight and 7 are questionable. Im going to wait like you suggest.

 

[justmeandtheflock]

Awesome pics!!!

 

[silkiechicken]

Thanks!

This is so exciting!

I almost didn't have a chance to have any chicks this year because I'm living in a concrete box 300 miles away from home! But ZooMummzy is making it possible!

I'll be updating this daily if possible. For new hatchers, taking pics daily isn't something I would reccomend; I'd suggest taking a peek on about day 6, 12, and 18 before "lock down".

 

[kingpincray]

extremely cool. I have both chicken eggs and duck eggs in the incubator at 7 days at the moment and I have candled them last night and could seem similar development on at least half of them. I can't wait as I am incubating my first lot of duck eggs

.

 

[Elite Silkies]

This is really neat, thanks for sharing.

I am taking pictures of them if they die during incubation, it's pretty neat. I had two fully formed that died today which would be day 14. My gruesome little girls thought it was neat, so they put them in alcohol so they can take them for show and tell.

 

[silkiechicken]

Video!

The embryos are now large enough to see moving on video! By eye you can start to see kicking on day 5. Here's one from last night. Enjoy!

 

[silkiechicken]

Depends on your light source. These are brown eggs that I'm candling with a high output flashlight.

http://www.eagletac.com/flashlights/t10lc2.html

In the past I used a surefire 6p which also works really well and can be bought at Lowe's.

http://www.surefire.com/6P-Original

Others use a projector or some other type of directed light source. With a simple maglight or some wide beam source, it might be harder to see though the eggs. Unless you have a bright directed light and light colored or white eggs, you often won't see as much, thus my recommendation that new hatchers don't toss eggs till day 13-14 or so.

That said, white eggs are MUCH easier to candle:
(Taken with the same camera, but using the surfire6p on day 12 or so of a white egg)

 

[silkiechicken]

Thanks!

I hope people can find the thread useful.

 

[silkiechicken]

My best guess is that they were fertilized, but not viable. New layer, or young rooster, can result in less than perfect conditions for a fertile and viable egg. I'd let your buff orp lay for a month, then collect eggs for hatching. If anything, after a month of laying, egg sizes will be larger (thus containing more nutrients) and that will give new chicks a better start to life.

Thank you for starting this thread! So much valuable information here.

I'd like to jump in if I can and share my experience as a beginner. My buff orp just started laying and I have a chocolate roo, so I thought I'd try incubating for the first time. I candled on day 7 and couldn't see anything. Since I am new and curious to the process, I thought I'd experiment and crack open the eggs to see if they were even fertile. I learned a lesson and that is to wait longer to candle. Turns out they were fertile (I think). Here are the 2 eggs. What do yall think? Were they fertile? I just put 3 more in the incubator and this time will wait longer before dismissing any eggs. Are brown eggs harder to candle? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance