Fertile eggs??

[joleneschix]

Ok so I am wanting to try my hand at incubating some eggs but I have no idea how to tell if they are fertile. My roo is definatly getting busy with my girls but which ones? Have no idea. And since I free range I do not know who is laying where. So how do I tell if the eggs are fertile. I read about candling the eggs but what am I looking for? And what temp do I need to maintain? Is there a thread on that? Every time I do a search I get a million threads that I have to read through to see the word candling. So any help would be great! Thanks.

 

[Joe Jordan]

youtube has been my best source of information on these issues because you can see the persons actually doing it. food for thought.

 

[satay]

To check before you incubate. Choose an egg and crack it into a dish. Look closely at the yolk. It will have a white circle on the yolk somewhere (small) if the circle has a dot called the bullseye in the middle fertile if no dot not fertile. it will give you a general idea if your eggs are fertile. Then pick some put in the bator and candle about day 10.

 

[satay]

To candle go into a very dark room. I use a small flash light and shine into the end of the egg. By day ten you should be able to see veins and the eggs should look dark, A none fertile egg will be totally clear. There are some posts on here that show candling and what to look for at various stages of incubation.

 

[satay]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=261876
There you go

 

[kizanne]

The above link is for candling.

Here is one for checking by cracking the egg.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/16008/how-to-tell-a-fertile-vs-infertile-egg-pictures

I find that is the rooster is getting busy they usually are fertile after about a week or two. The first week seems to be practice not necessarily hitting the right spot. After that I've had good results with fertility. Now some of the breeding thread recommend waiting til the rooster is 6 months old. But if you are just doing your own eggs I guess it doesn't really matter. Crack a couple you see the bullseye then incubate some. Hatching fuzzy butts is FUN.

 

[joleneschix]

Thank you all for the information. I collected four eggs today so far and cracked them to check. They all have the bulls eye that was shown in the pics on that link. I guess the roo is getting the job done. Good to know anyways. And checked out the candling link, that was crazy cool!!! I can't wait to start, my kids are going to love to see that in person. Is there more links about incubating? I read about locking down on day 18. Nothing stated about humidity, which everyone seems to be talking about in other threads. I am thinking about making my own. Need to look around more I guess!

But thank you to everyone, again! I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!

 

[satay]

Everyone is slightly different but i use 45% humidity from day 1 to 18 and 65% for lockdown til hatch. I use 37.5C for temps I'm in Australia can't remember the U.s conversion but I think it is 99.5 %F?. Do a search for temps I am sure there is a post under the iincubating and hatching thread in the sticky posts.

 

[Morrow1411]

1. My first time incubating was stressful too! At 7 days I could see red veins when I candled the eggs. The darker the egg, the harder it is to see. Slowly turning the egg while candling it also helped. I thought only 80% of mine were fertile, but I had a 95% hatch rate! I didn't know about looking for the bullseye as posted before me. I'm going to try that one!