Bunch of candling development pics!

[Kiraeh]

#3, my favourite egg. I think there might have been three days I didn't candle her.

Was thinking of doing a breakdown of my incubator setup, for anyone else diy-ing it, since it was pretty successful.

 

[Misfit_Chick]

I would love to see your incubator setup and the plans for my own.

 

[Kiraeh]

I did it! Here's my DIY bator thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/my-diy-incubator-set-up-hatched-12-14.1389500/

 

[AltonaAcres]

Awesome thread and amazing diy incubator! way to go!!!!!!!!!!

 

[NCMomofFive]

Day 15:
Different sides of the same egg:
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Others are almost totally opaque
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This one has always been hard to see through, so hopefully the difference is more about the shell than what's going on inside.
They're re starting to fill up in the pointy end now too. And it's nice to see a bit of air cell progress.
There's one egg that's worrying me, but I can't put my finger on what's different about it. It doesn't look like any quitter I've seen pictures of, tho it does seem murkier somehow. But the veins look good and it seems to have movement. I guess we'll see, I hope it make it.
View attachment 2195384

I hope that one made it!

 

[Kiraeh]

It didn't, unfortunately. It's somewhat validating that my instinct was right, but I'd rather have the chick. I had two that didn't hatch, they never moved into hatching position although they were still alive for lockdown.

 

[Kiraeh]

I'm doing it again! I dunno if anyone cares for even mooooooore candling pics but it's a useful record keeping tool for me.

Day 0: upgraded the rig somewhat! Details over in my incubator thread. I have fifteen more of the same polish/silkie eggs and also twelve assorted orpingtons! Pretty excited for those, that's the chicken I really wanted, but the eggs are more expensive so I wanted to hatch something cheaper first.
Learned a lesson in how easy it is to scramble them though. I had the polish/silkie eggs in the front seat of my car, one full egg carton and one with the three extras. I picked them up to get something from underneath them. The three egg carton was on top and, unbalanced, it fell over onto the car seat. Just that fall, maybe six inches, less than a foot, onto a soft surface, while tucked in the carton with tissue paper(the carton remained closed, nothing fell out) was enough to slightly detach the air cell of one of the three eggs. It's only a little wobbly, so I'm not going to treat it any different, but whew. No wonder shipped eggs get so rough.
Nothing to candle today tho!

 

[Kiraeh]

Day 1! This is already a more interesting hatch ahaha.
A couple things I didn't mention yesterday:
1: my silkie/polish eggs are oxine dipped, so they're very clean and sterilized, at the expense of some or all of the bloom. This wasn't a problem last time, even though I handled them a lot and didn't sterilize my sand, which I poured water all over every time I needed humidity. So maybe some protection is left/granted? Or I was lucky. Anyways, I'm a little concerned because the Orpington eggs are NOT washed. Which is a completely valid way of doing it, even my preference since I'm hand turning and want all the protection I can get. They're not super dirty, but they're not all impeccable either. Just gonna cross my fingers on it, nothing I can do now. At least it's not the other way around.

2: we've had really hot weather over the days these eggs would have been laid, and it shows haha. I have more long eggs, round eggs, eggs with ridges and stretch marks. Hopefully not a problem in the long run, but only time will tell.

So, what do I have to show you after 24hr of incubation? A few things actually.

A crack! I was messing around trying to get my air circulation right after the eggs were in, it must have happened then. membrane isn't broken, I sealed it with beeswax, that's the best I can do. Conflicted on reinforcing as much crack as possible vs the danger of cutting off oxygen, I went with reinforcing. Fingers crossed. Unfortunately one of the orpingtons.

A heartbeat! Did I mention it's been hot? This is one of the silkie/polish eggs. I thought I saw something in it last night when I weighed them, the faintest spot of red, made a note, and there it is. Looks like day 3 to me. None of the other eggs have development like this, tho I'll check them tomorrow, even then would be a bit early for this I think. Always nice to see tho!

A blood ring! My first ever. I'll leave it in until day 3 but I'm 95% sure, it seems unambiguous. And this is the egg that got wobbly after I dropped it. Seems a bit early to have a ring, so perhaps it also had a bit of early development too?

 

[Kiraeh]

Day 2:

Not much to show for day 2. Blood ring still ring-y, I'll break it open in the morning I think. Early bird still looking an extra ~3 days along.

Some of the eggs have this kind of faint early embryo semi-visible in them. Needs a really light, easy to candle egg to see. By tomorrow there will be more going one, though I might not see much in my darker orpington eggs for a while after that still.

 

[Kiraeh]

Day 3:

I cracked that blood ring and wow! It was kinda a ways along! Maybe five days or so? had visible wing nubs.

I probably killed it when I stored them in my basement(or the drop, that coulda been it too). They were there for about 24hr, I wanted to set them before a day off work so I could baby the incubator temp. I thought the air cell looked big, assumed that it was because of wobbly. Neat that the other egg with development did make it, it only has 2-3 days extra.

A bunch of eggs have clearly caught up to where number 11 was. Good going eggs! I had some I couldn't see anything going on in. Some dark enough that I could reasonably just not be seeing it, but some are nice pale silkie eggs, so they're probably going nowhere. We'll confirm on day 7, could always just be bad luck/weird positioning.