Candling Questions

[lizzy14]

First time hatcher here - I'm overwhelmed with the candling process because we have 24 eggs & some of which are dark or darkish. It's going to be a gamble with the dark ones. I have two questions based on my difficulties: 1. Are all dead or non-viable eggs likely to explode in the incubator if not removed?
2. How long is it okay to have the top of the incubator handling eggs to candle them?

We've done a 7-day candling but just don't feel certain enough yet about the likely dead ones to remove them. I'm thinking I'll give it another go around day 10, but it'll take me a while to get through all of them.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[sourland]

In my experience infertile eggs rarely 'explode', and eggs that do so generally ooze and STINK before exploding. I have had incubators shut down for half a day (power outages) with no impact upon the viability of the eggs. The time that it will take you to candle should have no negative impact on any viable eggs. Good luck for a successful hatch.

 

[AmyLynn2374]

I agree. It is rare for the egg to explode. I believe that the top reasons eggs explode isn't because the chick stopped developing but rather due to bacterial invasion in the egg.(I could be wrong.) I have a rule that if it's not a clear or a bloodring and it doesn't stink it stays in. I made the mistake of culling an egg I thought was a quitter mid way through incubation. It wasn't a quitter, and I felt horrible having killed the poor thing by pulling it and eggtopsying.

As for candling, many of the newer, pricier incubataors are adding a cool down feature to the bators. I was always told keep it to a half hour when candling, but I would assume that if these cool down periods for the incubators are 2 hours (Slow cool down and slow warm up.) That you should be able to push it 45 minutes or a bit more. I wouldn't push it that much more though because candling cools the eggs down faster than the cool down periods for the incubators.

 

[lazy gardener]

When candling, and upon finding an egg that I'm not sure about, I always put a big dark ? on the top of it. I can then go back the next night, or the night after and have a closer "look - see". Often, the repeat candlings will confirm my suspicion, or, I'll be rewarded to see a shifting shadow in there, that indicates that someone is home.

 

[lizzy14]

Thanks, everyone. Lazy gardener, you mentioned shadows which is something else I wanted to ask about. For some of them, we couldn't quite see distinctive veining or a dot but there is definitely a shadow - is this more often a good sign than bad?