2015 Peafowl Hatching Support Group - Eggs and Chicks!

[BYC-user-174785]

I'm sorry to hear about the eggs, but to help you out for next time I have a few questions. Did you have the eggs shipped to you? Did you candle them earlier in incubation? If the eggs are totally see through then they were likely not fertile in the first place. Usually you can easily detect early deaths (blood ring) when you candle the eggs at about 10 days into incubation. It is a good idea to candle any eggs that you incubate so that you can remove infertile or dead eggs; last thing you want is a bad egg exploding and contaminating your incubator.

 

[DylansMom]

I bought 8 peafowl eggs for ten a piece and found out a minute ago after the 30th day that they were all yellow inside no trace of blood at all, could it be from the male not mating with the mom

Could be that they were unfertilized. If they were shipped it could also be a result of rough handling by the postal service. I ship Pea eggs and have them shipped to me, sometimes they do well and sometimes nothing develops at all.

 

[Garden Peas]

I bought 8 peafowl eggs for ten a piece and found out a minute ago after the 30th day that they were all yellow inside no trace of blood at all, could it be from the male not mating with the mom

In peafowl, it will look white, with a ring around it, not red like a chicken's egg. @Birdrain92 , don't you have some nice photos?

@copperduck , if you can learn how to candle eggs (a small LED flashlight works well), it will help a lot in future hatchings. You should know for sure by 10 days then, and also it helps during hatching...

Sorry about the incubator bombs!

 

[Birdrain92]

In peafowl, it will look white, with a ring around it, not red like a chicken's egg. @Birdrain92 , don't you have some nice photos?

@copperduck , if you can learn how to candle eggs (a small LED flashlight works well), it will help a lot in future hatchings. You should know for sure by 10 days then, and also it helps during hatching...

Sorry about the incubator bombs!

I have a few but they're on my home computer. Right now I'm at the school so I don't have them. I'll try to get some good quality photos of the eggs I've gotten this season. I've never had so many eggs! Probably because 4 out 5 hens are now laying while last year it was just 1 hen laying.

 

[copperduck]

Thanks for all of the replies, I bought the eggs from a lady that I picked them up personally and I usually candle ducks so that's what I'm comparing them to

 

[Garden Peas]

Thanks for all of the replies, I bought the eggs from a lady that I picked them up personally and I usually candle ducks so that's what I'm comparing them to

Hmmm, did she say anything about fertility? Or whether she had incubated any? Most folks (at least the responsible ones) will check for fertility before selling eggs, although that is still no guarantee. But if earlier eggs are fertile, the later ones from the same hen (barring changes) are more likely to be.

But all sorts of things could have gone wrong... the eggs may never have been fertilized, they may have been stored improperly, handled badly -- obviously something went wrong, or she didn't check or they were misrepresented -- awfully hard to tell after the fact. There could be problems with the equipment, of course... a finicky incubator can ruin a load of eggs pretty darned quick. I'd be looking for whether the eggs were all "clears" with no development at all, or if there were any "quitters," because that would spell two different situations to me.

Definitely, next time, check for development by candling at 10 days. If you do a good job of candling with a sufficiently powerful flashlight and sufficiently dark room, and there's no spiderweb of developing veins at 10 days (or worse yet, no air sac), pull the egg out of the incubator and crack it open. Check for whether it appears to have been fertilized -- that will suggest whether it's a lack of fertility problem (i.e. something wrong with hen or peacock process), or whether it's an egg handling problem, contamination problem, incubator problem or what. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking a seller up front whether fertility has been checked while you are negotiating an egg purchase.

If it turns out the egg was actually fertilized (get those photos from @Birdrain92 ) and it failed to develop, or partially developed, then there's a whole long list of things that you can look at and try to fine tune for your altitude, humidity and hatching conditions. You've probably already heard that pea eggs are harder to hatch than say, chickens, but there's folks here that have learned how to do it successfully. We'd be glad to help walk you through it. But, of course, if the eggs aren't fertilized, it's too late to fix the problem once the shell is on...

Or you could always just buy live chicks -- guaranteed those came from fertile eggs

 

[Birdrain92]

Hmmm, did she say anything about fertility? Or whether she had incubated any? Most folks (at least the responsible ones) will check for fertility before selling eggs, although that is still no guarantee. But if earlier eggs are fertile, the later ones from the same hen (barring changes) are more likely to be.

But all sorts of things could have gone wrong... the eggs may never have been fertilized, they may have been stored improperly, handled badly -- obviously something went wrong, or she didn't check or they were misrepresented -- awfully hard to tell after the fact. There could be problems with the equipment, of course... a finicky incubator can ruin a load of eggs pretty darned quick. I'd be looking for whether the eggs were all "clears" with no development at all, or if there were any "quitters," because that would spell two different situations to me.

Definitely, next time, check for development by candling at 10 days. If you do a good job of candling with a sufficiently powerful flashlight and sufficiently dark room, and there's no spiderweb of developing veins at 10 days (or worse yet, no air sac), pull the egg out of the incubator and crack it open. Check for whether it appears to have been fertilized -- that will suggest whether it's a lack of fertility problem (i.e. something wrong with hen or peacock process), or whether it's an egg handling problem, contamination problem, incubator problem or what. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking a seller up front whether fertility has been checked while you are negotiating an egg purchase.

If it turns out the egg was actually fertilized (get those photos from @Birdrain92 ) and it failed to develop, or partially developed, then there's a whole long list of things that you can look at and try to fine tune for your altitude, humidity and hatching conditions. You've probably already heard that pea eggs are harder to hatch than say, chickens, but there's folks here that have learned how to do it successfully. We'd be glad to help walk you through it. But, of course, if the eggs aren't fertilized, it's too late to fix the problem once the shell is on...

Or you could always just buy live chicks -- guaranteed those came from fertile eggs

I'm going to take new pictures. I have fertile peafowl eggs and eggs that I've made sure they're infertile.

 

[Birdrain92]

Infertile.

The dark spot inside the air cell is a sign of fertility. Sorry I don't have better pics.





Make that I can't because my camera sucks. Here's older photos.

 

[copperduck]

Well it looked like it had a dark spot in them that's why I left them alone for so long but apparently the eggs must of been infertile to not see one spot of blood when I cracked them open, what a waste of money and total bummer on my excitement, and I'm sure it's not my incubator(it is home made) all my ducks are candling just fine so far, I did only turn them three times a day as I would with my other eggs would that make a huge deal?

 

[Birdrain92]

Well it looked like it had a dark spot in them that's why I left them alone for so long but apparently the eggs must of been infertile to not see one spot of blood when I cracked them open, what a waste of money and total bummer on my excitement, and I'm sure it's not my incubator(it is home made) all my ducks are candling just fine so far, I did only turn them three times a day as I would with my other eggs would that make a huge deal?

I rotate them twice a day sometimes three times a day. I start off with a humidity around 40 and then during hatching bump it up to 50-60 range. I increase the humidity when I notice it taking peachicks a while to get out.