Kiraeh
Songster
It's my first hatch, and I diy'd an incubator, and all of my eggs are developing haha which is great but I'm just waiting for something to go horribly wrong lol. So far so good!
I have steady hands and a good phone camera and some lovely pale silkie eggs so I've gotten some great candling pictures though! Who doesn't like more pictures.
As far as I can tell they're all doing great so far but I noticed some things that I haven't seen mentioned before or not all in the same place, and I thought it might be helpful for someone.
My pics start on day three, that's when I got a flashlight and was able to stop using my phone light but I'm hand turning so I usually candle at least a few eggs a day while I'm doing that anyways.
Day 3:
This was a really exciting day because I could see the heartbeat! I spotted veins in some of my eggs the day before but it was really cool to catch the heartbeat, by the next day you couldn't detect it any more.
One thing I noticed, and it's visible in the first and last pictures here, is that thick dark ring that the shadow of the yolk makes. The last picture in particular, the embryo was hiding under the air cell and hard to find, I had a couple eggs like that where it wasn't visible right away but that ominous shadow was- I worried that it was a blood ring. I was able to locate the embryo in all of my eggs over a couple cycles of turning but if I hadn't been doing that and had just candled once, I'd have made the same mistake Ive seen a few posts about and thought I had quitters. I was expecting quitters! But I turned the eggs and checked again later when the embryo had floated over to the other side and none of them were. Looking at confirmed blood rings, they seem to have much sharper edges than this shadow.
Day 4:
The window for seeing the heartbeat seemed to be no more than 24 hr. By the next evening it was gone and the noticeable bigger embryo has eyes forming.
Day 5:
No big changes, everything is a bit bigger, a bit more developed. The veins are spreading around the shell.
Day 6:
Bigger and twitchier! At this stage the embryos were all still sitting close to the edge of the egg, with clearly visible eyes and often tiny nubs of developing limbs could be seen. I marked all my air cells on this day and weighed my eggs to how they compared to their initial weights.
Whuf, this is a lot to type on my phone, I'm gonna take a break and come back with a few more days in another post.
I have steady hands and a good phone camera and some lovely pale silkie eggs so I've gotten some great candling pictures though! Who doesn't like more pictures.
As far as I can tell they're all doing great so far but I noticed some things that I haven't seen mentioned before or not all in the same place, and I thought it might be helpful for someone.
My pics start on day three, that's when I got a flashlight and was able to stop using my phone light but I'm hand turning so I usually candle at least a few eggs a day while I'm doing that anyways.
Day 3:
This was a really exciting day because I could see the heartbeat! I spotted veins in some of my eggs the day before but it was really cool to catch the heartbeat, by the next day you couldn't detect it any more.
One thing I noticed, and it's visible in the first and last pictures here, is that thick dark ring that the shadow of the yolk makes. The last picture in particular, the embryo was hiding under the air cell and hard to find, I had a couple eggs like that where it wasn't visible right away but that ominous shadow was- I worried that it was a blood ring. I was able to locate the embryo in all of my eggs over a couple cycles of turning but if I hadn't been doing that and had just candled once, I'd have made the same mistake Ive seen a few posts about and thought I had quitters. I was expecting quitters! But I turned the eggs and checked again later when the embryo had floated over to the other side and none of them were. Looking at confirmed blood rings, they seem to have much sharper edges than this shadow.
Day 4:
The window for seeing the heartbeat seemed to be no more than 24 hr. By the next evening it was gone and the noticeable bigger embryo has eyes forming.
Day 5:
No big changes, everything is a bit bigger, a bit more developed. The veins are spreading around the shell.
Day 6:
Bigger and twitchier! At this stage the embryos were all still sitting close to the edge of the egg, with clearly visible eyes and often tiny nubs of developing limbs could be seen. I marked all my air cells on this day and weighed my eggs to how they compared to their initial weights.
Whuf, this is a lot to type on my phone, I'm gonna take a break and come back with a few more days in another post.