Broody hens and good or bad egg questions

[Joyze172]

I am a newbie at broody hens, fertilized eggs, candling and hatching. Wondering if I could get some advice about a few eggs I candled.

Background is I have 3 broody wyandottes (aprox 1 yr old). 1 broody started 1 week ago and is sitting on a fake egg. 2nd broody is sitting on 6 oops I mean 5 (removed 1 questionable egg out) 19 day fertilized eggs from my flock. 3rd broody is sitting on 6 Ayam Cermani eggs I ordered on ebay and it's the 12th day.

Today I candled all of them. 1 from broody #2 smelled icky had white patches on it and when I candled it was completely black no air cell. I assumed it was going rotten and took it out. Does this sound like a bad egg? I had to wash my hands after I touched it to get the smell out. Poor hen the whole nest box smells like it. I just cleaned it out fresh yesterday. With it so close to hatch day do I try and clean it again?
This is a good one from broody #2 I think.

Do eggs/chicks smell when they are hatching?


When I candled broody #3 I got this egg


Is this an unfertilized egg? It's not vieny or like the others. Should I remove it? It doesn't smell icky.

Being a newbie I think I did alot of things wrong with broody hen #2. One thing was placing eggs under her each day for 3 days in a row rather than all at once. Oops! When broody hen #1 wouldn't break ( putting her in crate for 3 days when I let her out, back she went) I decided to leave her on a fake egg and depending on broody #2 hatch put the remaining younger eggs under her. Could this work?

 

[LRH97]

Ah, broody hens. Such fun! If an egg smells bad, it's definitely best to remove it. Gasses are building up and may cause a big stinking explosion, likely ruining your hatch. If it's dark, and shouldn't be (meaning not yet far along enough in development) and it smells, it's likely a bad egg.

It can be so challenging to tell from pictures. In the first picture, if it's at day 19, it should be getting ready to hatch, so you shouldn't be able to see through it much. This would be good. If the nest is clean other than the smell, I wouldn't bother it. In the second picture, if this egg is on day 12, it's a dud. May not have been fertile, may have just not taken off. Hatch rates on shipped eggs can literally be 0 to 100% and anywhere in between. However, this egg doesn't look to be optimum hatching quality anyway given on how porous the shell is. I'd remove. No sense in wasting room under the hen.

Any eggs you want to hatch should be collected and then set at the same time. This way everyone hatches on the same day. Putting the younger eggs under another broody should work fine. Just be sure to catch them in time. If the broody that you will take them from hatches chicks, you'll need to grab the eggs and put them under your other hen before the hen with chicks leaves the nest. Otherwise the unhatched eggs may chill.

Also, I'm including a link to another thread with some very good candling pictures for your reference.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ng-pics-progression-though-incubation.261876/

Best of luck on your hatches!