Eggtopsy: What happened to my egg? {Graphic Pictures}

[NaomiSarah]

Holy crap, Kedreeva, I have a pretty strong stomach but gagged fourteen seconds into that video. Didn't make it past twenty seconds. Good job documenting that in the name of vomitology!! Lol!!!

 

[Chicken_Lover4567]

That....was officially the grossest thing I have ever witnessed

 

[Kedreeva]

lol you're welcome... At least it's something gross to show to your friends to see who has the strongest stomach. I don't think anyone noticed I was peeling it apart with my bare hands >.> I just couldn't bring myself to actually pull it apart in the bowl, but now I wish I had.

 

[chickee]

Kedreeva, I candled my shipped eggs last night and 12 of the 16 were clear, 1 blood ring and 3 growing

I did an eggtopsy on the clears to see what happened and 10 had no developement and two had thickened yokes with a oval area of reddish color. My question to you is, I didn't see a spot (fertile eye) in any of the yokes, so does that mean that the egg wasn't fertile or would it not show after sitting in the incubator for 7 days? Yours or anyone elses experience with this would be appreciated!

 

[Kedreeva]

If the yolk was intact, then you should be able to see the bullseye (bullseye for fertile, small white dot for infertile) whether or not it was incubated. Either way you would see SOME sort of dot, and the fact that you say you did not see any dot at all leads me to think that the dots may have been on the side of the egg you didn't see, or else they were so close to a lining or other tissue that you overlooked them. It's also possible you were looking for a much larger dot than the spot actually is (the first time I looked, I wasn't sure of the size I was looking for so I just got very confused) I have cracked open 20 day old peafowl eggs and been able to see the infertile spot, as well as spots on 14 day incubated duck eggs that were clears, so I'm fairly certain incubation doesn't dissolve them.

I would be interested greatly in seeing the thick yolked eggs with reddish spot, but I assume you did not get pictures. I am wondering if perhaps those guys started but quit the first day, before establishing veins.

Out of curiosity, where did you obtain the eggs? If they were shipped to you it may be possible (and I'm just theorizing) that the spots were dislocated in shipping. Another possibility (as unlikely as it is) is that the hens which laid the eggs are sterile. I'm not sure the effect this would have on the dot inside the egg, but as I assume the infertile eggs start with the white dot and need a male's bits to become a bullseye, if the dot was absent to start with then the problem may lay with the hen- considering you do have fertile eggs, however, this seems very unlikely. If the hen that laid them was a just-started-laying pullet, then it's possible she was pumping out eggs before she was quite ready to hatch anything from them.

 

[SportChick]

Wow! That was a really grotesque thing Ked!

I wonder if chickens can get the equivalent of a molar pregnancy which is a human equivalent of that meaty thing.

 

[chickee]

Quote:
Thanks for the all the information.

The eggs were very fresh (2-4 days old) shipped, traveled by air, arrived in excellent condition with only 5 having slightly loose air cells, and had good shell quality. They came from a well established, reptuable breeder/BYC member who's eggs have had good hatch rate according to other BYC members, so this is a mystery why these eggs were clears. I suspect the two that had a oval portion with blood had maybe started trying to grow but didn't even get to the veining stage as you suggested. I thought about taking a picture but there wasn't much to see, the red discoloration was deep into the yoke and not that obvious. It is possible in this heat that they got hot then cooled during shipping. I say this because one of the three growing eggs looks more advanced than the other two. Well, I guess it will remain a mystery for now.

Thanks!

 

[Kedreeva]

Quote:
Oof, yes that is a definitely possibility. I obtained some eggs from a friend who didn't know to keep them in a cool place and she didn't tell me she'd been storing them in her 100+ degree barn..... so I settled them in a cool room and killed the ENTIRE group who were on day 1-3 of incubation. *facepalm* A mess, and quite depressing.

 

[SarahIrl]

Going back to the pic of the cicks with the whitish thick gooey blobs on them - all my chicks have had this too. On good hatches it stays in the bottom of the egg when the chick gets out, sometimes a little clings to it's body if is still quite wet getting out. It doesn't smell so have never considered it to be bacterial, it dries to a yellow/grey colour. hhhhhhhhhhh

I recently had to elp a non-prgressing goose egg hatch and that had it's insides on the outside too. It was the only one of three to pip and stayed that way for 12 hours, already one day late. It was getting very dried out and very very quiet, so I made the pip a bit bigger to see what was going on. While doing tis I candled quickly to check te air cell and it was extremely lopsided, going at a steep angle up the side of the shell - no way was this gosling going to turn. So, I chipped away the whole top of the egg nest. Pulled back the outer membrane to shell level. Then pipped the air sac (it hadn't, just gone to the outside shell due to inability to turn) and made a hole there. Next, I widened the pip hole it had made so I could pull the beak out past the nostrils.

I then rolled back the inner membrane (my preferred way of manually hatching eggs rathern than piercing it, I stretch it slowly and wind it back over the gosling, rather like taking the plastic wrapper off a cucumber) and left it back into the incubator to struggle out. It didn't. So after another two hours I pulled it to see thick yellowy glue like fluid leaking from the egg. It was too thick to drip held up but oozed from the shell. Yuck. Still, no smell. So, I chipped way most of the shell, and peeled back the rest of the outer membrane. I rolled back more inner membrane so it was over the fattest point of the gosling and tilted it so it would slide out but not sever the umbilical. I wish I hadn't. It slid forward, and as I looked into the large end of the egg I could see a mass of dark red/brown blood, a very thick umbilical and a large pink and red veined mass at it's rump. The yolk was absorbed but it's innards were now outards. The mass was about half the size the yolk should have been. The chick was clearly bleeding to death so I culled it there and then by holding my fingers over it's nostrils and keeping it's beak closed. It hadn't peeped once in six hours and it's breathing was almost stopped, just one raggedy breath every 30 seconds or so. It never opened it's eye and was stone cold.

Very sad as I set nine, only three developed, two died in lockdown (day 27 and 29 I think) and this one pipped but was never going to make it.

 

[Kedreeva]

Oof, sorry to hear about that, Sarah