First time Candling...

[SethRiddle]

Hello,

This is my first time candling eggs. It's day 3, and I can only see a dark spot about the size of a yolk on all of my eggs. I don't see any veins or arterial growth yet. Is this normal? All the websites I look at say I should be seeing veins today?

Thanks for any help,

-Seth

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Gotta check this thread out...
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...g-candling-pics-progression-though-incubation

 

[Joshua G]

Day 3 sounds a little early to me.
I don't candle until day 7. By then you should clearly see some veins.

 

[mortie]

I candled mine about 82 hours in. When I did it, it looked like someone has put one of those kiddie spider rings in each of them. A little dark spot with some veins radiating from it. Sometimes I had to rotate the egg around to see it or tilt it for the "spider" to really come into focus. That was my first time candling and I was pretty thrilled to see those little spiders.

A few hours makes a lot of difference at this stage.

Since I am a newbie too, when I candled, I referenced these pictures to help me understand what I should be looking for. I used these because they are very easy to see, a lot of candling pictures are difficult to see. http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2011/04/chicken-embryo-development-graphic.html

 

[MasKot]

What color eggs do you have? There's a real difference between light (white, light blue etc) and darker eggs. I'm only on my first incubation so a real newbie at this, but on my light blue eggs we could see very clear spiderwebs on day 3 vs the brown eggs a few days later on day 5. So be patient and good luck!

 

[mortie]

Mine are medium brown and blue. The blue ones are harder for me to see into. I have read it is because the blue pigment goes all the way through the shell. With most of the brown ones the color is only on the outside.

 

[SethRiddle]

My eggs are a rainbow. I have blue, green, dark brown, and light brown (more a cream I suppose)..

So, tonight I candled, and EUREKA! 100% fertilized, 100% showing growth with clear veins!

Thank you all so much for the support. It's terrifying, yet thrilling to me (incubating eggs), and having a community full of wonderful people to help me out is a big relief.

I'll keep everyone posted!

 

[SethRiddle]

Yeah, I don't trust any of my thermometers, I have 5 in there... then I average them to keep it as close to 99.5˚ as possible.

 

[mortie]

That's awesome. Out of my 28, 2 were infertile and I have 2 quitters so far. Even though this is my first time hatching (and having chickens at all, my chicks will be my first chickens) I feel like I am doing ok.

 

[Joshua G]

Hello,

This is my first time candling eggs. It's day 3, and I can only see a dark spot about the size of a yolk on all of my eggs. I don't see any veins or arterial growth yet. Is this normal? All the websites I look at say I should be seeing veins today?

Thanks for any help,

-Seth

Good luck with your first hatch!

That's awesome. Out of my 28, 2 were infertile and I have 2 quitters so far. Even though this is my first time hatching (and having chickens at all, my chicks will be my first chickens) I feel like I am doing ok.

Good luck with your first hatch!