Candling Amateur needs advice, PLEASE!

[bjd105]

Thought I had three unfertile eggs and all were developing at day ten in my incubator. I also broke two of which one was fertile. I candled and those three were all fertile. My eggs vary in size and color. I have four browns, two Rhode Island(yearling's) and various aged rescued hens with three Rhode Island Reds roosters and an aged disabled rescued rooster so egg colors vary and are difficult to candle. I get pretty upset when I destroy a viable embryo. (birds are my weakness and I can tame and pet pretty much anything) I've heard if you leave an undeveloped egg in the bator and it explodes it will destroy the entire batch. Any advice on candling and sorting developing incubator eggs would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[Impress]

Use your nose. A stinker usually stinks BEFORE it explodes. I take my egg trays out once a week and give them a good sniff, each egg. I have had exploders before, and they never affected my rate of hatch as long as I took them out promptly and cleaned up any mess.

But you can almost always smell them before they pop, shew it is an unmistakable odor!

 

[bjd105]

Thanks impress, weekly it is. I guess we've all smelled rotten eggs' before. I will definitely be taking your advice. I'm thinking my first hatch may have a lower success rate, but it'll be a good learning experience. My first home made Bator too but temps n humidity are holding good. Looking forward to setting my second batch!

 

[fastbird]

I started 35 eggs 10 days ago and on day 4 I could see 2 that had not even started, cracked them and was right. On day 7 I could see 1 with a blood ring, and 6 That I could see no movement in but could see movement and life in the rest. On day 8 one of the six was dead and I could see movement in all the rest, 31 eggs that looked like the embryos were swimming around in the eggs. None of the dead eggs smelled, just the blood ring and no movement. I will not candle again until day 14 because all of the eggs at day 8 had life that I left in the Bator. If all are still alive on lockdown day I won't worry about an exploding egg because I really don't think much can happen in that little ammount of time. I also think you can figure out they are dead before they have time to smell. I am candling heavy shelled brown eggs. I could easily see inside them with a stinger flashlight.