First incubation, fifth day, help needed.

[james w]

Hi,

This is my first incubation and I have been trying to follow as best I can my Storey's guide to raising chickens. The chapter on incubation is pretty good but I have stumbled a little on the candling. I have looked at endless photos of how the egg should appear at various stages of development.

I candled again today, day 5, and saw a mass in each egg. The Storey's guide recommends breaking eggs to confirm findings, and as I was convinced there was nothing going on, I decided to break one of the ten eggs.

The results are here:

http://jamesandrosalinda.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!BD096268F8FB68C7!138/

I was a little surprised at what I saw since I expected to see, well, not much. I guess what I am asking is, is the fleshly little thing in the center the developing chick? If so, great, I feel a little bad at terminating a potentially viable chicken but I needed to know things were going well.

Thanks for any comments.

 

[Mareloo]

You need an answer from one of the more experienced people here, but as far as I can tell, you are very well on track for day 5. When you candle and you see a black dot floating around (on day 5) you know you good..

 

[speckledhen]

Yes, that is the chick. I have incubated eggs to day four, just to test fertility on certain hens and opened them, never intending to incubate all the way to hatch. At day 4, I could see the heart beating and it did that for hours in a bowl, truly amazing to see.

 

[serendipity22]

This is my first incubating experience so I've candled just about every day just to get the feel for how the eggs look at what day. (I don't suspect that I'll do it like this every time I incubate but just wanted the knowledge. KWIM?)

I know now that I won't bother candling until at least day 8. Cause at that time you can really see some veining or dark blobs or even movement in the good eggs.

So far, I've only culled one egg at day 8. It had the blood ring and I did open it up to confirm. And.... It was a bad egg.

**I would love to figure out how to photograph these eggs when I'm candling just so I can refer back to the pictures at a later time. Still working on that though.

 

[speckledhen]

Here's Nifty's candling technique. Calls for a VERY bright LED flashlight and no flash on the camera. I suspect a lowlight setting on the camera would help, but mine doesn't have that.
http://www.nifty-stuff.com/candling-eggs.php

 

[silkiechicken]

Yep, that would be a stage 29 chick by the looks of it. It's got little arms and legs, and that cute big eye that you see when you candle them. If you do want things to hatch in the future, candle at day 10 if you do not have a bright enough light to see inside clearly.