Broken egg or hatching??

[winstonsgrrrl]

Today is day 14 on my quail hatch, and I noticed this morning that one egg has multiple cracks in it--almost like a spiderweb "pattern." Last night I put them on lockdown and put a paper towel under them. While doing this, I dropped two of the eggs a few inches onto the wire. I checked them and they seemed intact at the time. Could this be a delayed breakage from that or is it hatching already? BTW, this is my very first hatch.

 

[vyshtia]

When chicks hatch they do it like this:

The pip is the first little hole they make, then they zip all the way around to make a lid...then they pop out. If your cracks don't look like this, then the egg is damaged. You can seal the cracks with nail polish or candle wax.

 

[winstonsgrrrl]

Thanks for the pic! My egg definitely does not look like that. I will make sure to toss it out when I get home from work.

 

[mandelyn]

Hatching "cracks" will start with a single, circular, outward facing crack that will have about 3 small cracks, creating about 4 small triangles of broken shell. That's the pip. From there the chick will work it's away around in a series of these, until it is done like the above photo shows.

It will happen on the fat end of the egg, just below the air sac.

Anything else is just a crack and the egg most likely will not hatch.