4th Annual BYC NYD Hatch-a-long

I have never heard of someone doing this but from my experience with hatching how would you deal with the membrane drying or not being able to sweet off moisture? The shell is porous so whatever you try to use would need to be porous also. The inside membrane is opaque so I don't think you would really be able to see anything even with figuring out the shell issue. Plus a higher probability of a bad egg contaminating your other eggs if it doesn't work, would stink to lose an incubator full of eggs. I would be awesome to see if you could find a way of doing it though.
I know it's a gamble. These are cheap eggs and I'm only doing it to a few of them. It's all to see what happens. There are 2 inner membranes. The inner of the 2 is clear while the other is more of a white. I realize it will not be able to "sweat off" as much so that is another reason why I'm letting them sit for a week in a low humidity area to jump start the size of the air sacs. The sarran wrap may work best as far as the egg being about to lose moisture. And I know by doing this there is a much higher probability of bacteria invading, but I know exactly what to watch for. If removed in time, one bad egg won't spoil the rest. It's just for fun, as it would be very cool to be able to watch the embryo form in color without the use of a flashlight in a dark room.
 
I'm ordering some silver laced cochin eggs off ebay, but I believe that they will come too soon.  For the hatchalong, I plan to add some silkie eggs from my neighbors to the incubator with you all.  The catch is I'm doing a little experiment,  I want to watch an embryo develop.  I have a few ideas in my head, all of which involve removing the top half of the shell around the air sac, so that the clear inner membrane remains intact. I then am going to cover that membrane with clear hot glue to act like a "shell". I was also thinking of covering a different one with clear nailpolish.  Another idea is using clear candle wax to act like a "shell", and finally, I will also simply cover the top of an egg with sarran wrap to act like a "shell". I won't do this to all of the silkie eggs, just a couple to see what will happen.  What do you think?


I really have no experience with this either, but a few things are iffy to me. Nail polish gives off fumes, the wax will get soft in the heat, and the moisture might loosen hot glue. It will be interesting to see what you do.
 
I really have no experience with this either, but a few things are iffy to me. Nail polish gives off fumes, the wax will get soft in the heat, and the moisture might loosen hot glue. It will be interesting to see what you do.

Nail polish once dry won't give off fumes, but I am wondering if becuase the membranes are permeable that chemicals could seep into the egg. I didn't think of the wax melting in high tempatrues, I'll look into that to find that magic number. I think the hot glue would stay, but that is also a very valid point. I'm most hopeful for the egg with the sarran wrap. My idea for the wax and the nail polish came from the fact that those are both very useful ways to seal a crack in an egg to prevent bacteria from invading, and lots of chicks have hatched from eggs like that. The question is what will happen when they cover such a large surface area. It will definately be a gamble.
 
This morning I went out with my phone to try to get a photo of my rooster, and suddenly he did this flapper thing and i was all set to take a picture but my phone decided to take that moment to say I have no more data left on my phone -_-

Yeah And It's Hard To Get a Perfect Picture Of Your Rooster Flapping His Wings
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I once had a cracked egg, and it was developing fine, but I got worried, so I put nail polish on the crack, the chick died that day. I wouldn't recommend nail polish =/
 
Nail polish once dry won't give off fumes, but I am wondering if becuase the membranes are permeable that chemicals could seep into the egg. I didn't think of the wax melting in high tempatrues, I'll look into that to find that magic number.  I think the hot glue would stay, but that is also a very valid point.  I'm most hopeful for the egg with the sarran wrap.  My idea for the wax and the nail polish came from the fact that those are both very useful ways to seal a crack in an egg to prevent bacteria from invading, and lots of chicks have hatched from eggs like that.  The question is what will happen when they cover such a large surface area. It will definately be a gamble.


I have used wax myself (as well as tape) to seal a crack, worked well but it did get really soft under the heat. It also wasn't a very large area like you noted. The chemical isue is another valid concern. I agree that the saran wrap appears to be the most likely choice so far. Would love to see pictures of your project.
 
I've seen many stories of cracked eggs that were covered with nail polish in which chicks hatched out just fine, but sorry about yours. I'm considering just doing the hot glue and sarran wrap anyways. I'll figure out what I'm doing exactly in a couple of weeks.
 

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