Help! Need to know to candle eggs or not??

[arkansaschicks]

I have a broody hen that is on about 10 eggs and it is about day 11. For the last week I have tried to get to the eggs to candle them to know if they are fertile or not. With two roosters I am sure more than half are fertile.
When I mess with the eggs she gets very mean and starts pecking violently and I am afraid she might peck a couple of the eggs as I am taking them out. I know that handling them is not a good thing especially this far along. So my question is, is it more important to remove any unfertile eggs or is it better to not touch them and just let them all go the 21 days? I guess I am afraid of any bad eggs exploding so I would really like to remove the ones that are not growing. Then again I am new at this and do not know if I could really tell which eggs are bad. The brown ones are really hard to see into! Should I just leave the eggs alone and "what happens happens"? Please let me know what is best way to handle this situation. THANKS!!!

 

[ZooMummzy]

I didn't mess with the eggs under my broody at all until day 26. By then I figured all that were going to hatch had already so I just removed the rest. Just my opinion, but I would let nature do its thing and leave her alone.

 

[arkansaschicks]

I agree with you-just let them be. How bad is it if an egg explodes and does it harm all the other eggs? What are the chances of that happening?

 

[arkansaschicks]

Sorry just saw when I posted I posted to wrong section!

 

[ZooMummzy]

Quote:
I agree. The chances are pretty slim and I really think you would smell a bad egg before it even got to that point.

 

[dieselgrl48]

I personaly never messed with my hen's sitting on egg's.A lot of time's if the egg's are bad the hen's will naturaly roll them out of the nest.The only egg's I tried to mess with were goose egg's.

Yea I got bit lol.I just couldn't stand it though I was hoping for gosling's so bad.Im sure the egg's will do just fine.