Has anyone ever put a soft shelled egg in the incubator?

[RooptyDoo]

Has anyone ever tried this? I am going to try it just as an experiment. If it doesn't work it doesn't but, if it does it will be so cool. The membrane is clear so I can see the yoke and everything. Could you imagine what it would be like to see the baby chick inside of it moving!? I will update on how it is doing if it does anything at all.

 

[Akane]

I put a soft shelled but not shell less one in. You couldn't see through it. Never developped. Usually these eggs are the pullets first try and not fertile or one we broke open didn't even have a fully formed yolk. With no shell and just membrane I'm sure the egg would loose way too much moisture and probably just dry out inside. You'd have to incubate it seperate with a different humidity to keep it just right but I have no idea what that is.

 

[twigg]

Quote:
It's possible that a viable egg can be laid with soft, or no shell.

There are a lot of problems trying to hatch them the biggest being humidity control. All the rules go out of the window and you would have to incubate it on it's own, and use a weight loss technique to manage humidity.

Normally this would only be worthwhile for a rare or valuable egg.

As a side note ...... we habitually incubate many eggs at a time. Eggs with thinner shells will lose weight faster than eggs with thick ones. This can be a reason that some, apparently normal eggs, don't hatch.

 

[RooptyDoo]

I picked it up last night to put a wet paper towel under it and it popped.

 

[Poultra]

Another problem with trying to hatch a soft/thin/nonexistent shelled egg, in addition to moisture loss, would be that the chick absorbs calcium from the shell a day or two before it hatches. No shell ---> no calcium ---> no bones worth speaking of. If you've ever hear of the incubating experiments where the egg is cracked open onto saran wrap and incubated so development can be observed, this would be THE reason why the chick will not go all the way to hatch (ignoring other complications that may occur during the experiment).

If it was just in the membrane, no shell, it would have been neat to try just to be able to see development occur over time. Sorry to hear it popped.

 

[Bhumika]

Another problem with trying to hatch a soft/thin/nonexistent shelled egg, in addition to moisture loss, would be that the chick absorbs calcium from the shell a day or two before it hatches. No shell ---> no calcium ---> no bones worth speaking of. If you've ever hear of the incubating experiments where the egg is cracked open onto saran wrap and incubated so development can be observed, this would be THE reason why the chick will not go all the way to hatch (ignoring other complications that may occur during the experiment).

If it was just in the membrane, no shell, it would have been neat to try just to be able to see development occur over time. Sorry to hear it popped.

I dunno if the egg i have has a membrane or not. The butcher near my home was cutting a duck for family dinner n found the egg inside the duck. The butcher gave it to me. It seemed the duck would have laid the egg by tomoro morning. Can i incubate the egg. The shell is soft yet.