So a huge sad lesson learned for my son and I tonight. We have a Broody buff Orpington who has been sitting on borrowed possibly fertile eggs since 6/8. I am getting ready to go out of town and leave hubby and 9 y/o son with chicken chores. So we decided we would candle her 7 eggs tonight after reading all the horror stories of bad eggs exploding under momma or to see if they were even fertile. So we candled and I honestly had no clue what I was seeing (brown eggs) so as my son was carefully placing the eggs back under my hen she attempted to peck his hand and got her egg instead. It immediately busted and as you can see from the photo there was no doubt it was fertile 
. Well, needless to say I feel horrible messing with Mother Nature and could kick myself for even checking them now. My son is super sad too even tho he knows it wasn’t his fault. I do want to ask those with more experience if this little baby looks like 9-10 days?? We have never done this before and want to make sure we are home for her if more of these eggs are fertile. My hope is that if this one was, at least a couple more will be, I would be heartbroken for my sweet hen if she sat all this time with no reward.
