Hey yall, I've been looking around the site trying to find my answer and have yet to come across quite what I was looking for. I have 3 RIR/Sex-Link eggs that I tried to candle for the first time tonight. I do wash my hands before handling just FYI. They were about 4.5 days old. 1 showed nothing the other 2 have this like 1/2" dark colored band sitting round about 1/3 of the way down from the top or so. I'm giving them a few more days (checking again on day 10) unless I'm told otherwise. Does anyone have pics they can post of how normal/abnormal developement looks in a brown egg? If there is already a thread for this please post the link for me! 1 more question-what is the lowest the temp in the bator can drop without causing damage? We had a power outage last night due to the snow and although covered with a big comforter, it still dropped to 97.7 Thanks yall!
Follow this link: Candling https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=119420 https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=113349 https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=112020
If there is a ring going around the egg, its probably a blood ring. That means that the embryo died. (I believe) Wait for a second opinion before you do anything though. Usually people wait until day 8 or 9 before they candle, because then it is obvious whether the egg is living or.... not. I hope I am wrong!! Jason
I had an 24 hour outage last winter an my incubator is outside. I think the eggs got down to about 60*F. They still hatched ok. As for the ring you are seeing. I dont think they are blood rings. Blood rings are usually less than the width of a "Sharpy" marker mark.
It can be very hard to tell with brown eggs. I am hatching an assortment of eggs...white shells to dark chocolate brown. I recently purchased a new mini flashlight that is awesome!!! I got it at Walmart. It is a Coleman MAX and is 115 lumimnaires (sp?). I can even see through the chocolate maran eggs with it. So that might be helpful to you. Here is a pic of one of my lighter brown eggs being candled. I could not get a good pic of the darker eggs being candled. This is around day 4 too, so I hope it helps! There is also a very good thread here that shows lots of pics at different stages. It helped me a lot. I waited until day 8 before I got rid of any who were not developing...then held out 3 more days before making a decision on a brown egg with a blood ring. Good luck and I wish you success!
Thanks for all of the responses so far guys, I really appreciate it! I know it's not a blood ring because it is not by any means thin, it shows literally like a super thick rubberband around the entire circumfrence of the egg. Just odd...haven't seen anything like it yet-I thought maybe it was just me it but no matter what angle I have the light it doesn't seem to move. *4CrazyGirlz-I am SOOO going to have to get that now Thanks!!! We're getting FBCM chicks on the 20th-that will certainly come in handy. Rosie's eggs are your typical brown eggs so hopefully that will help see what's going on!
Quote:My eggs actually did that too. In fact, two of them I thought for sure were quitters because of it. They weren't. Just slower than the other five(last I candled, they were moving inside, one even sorta danced for me). They might die at this point though, because they turned out to be about 3 or so days behind the others and all of them are on lockdown together. I'm not saying this is what's happening to yours. Just that it's what turned out to be the "deal" with mine. Like, possibly a stage in incubation where they look like that. Either way, I'd wait on it before making any calls.
Rin-I appreciate the heads up, hopefully that will not be the situation with mine (and sorry to hear about yours!) but it's always better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best anyhow! That's too cute about the little one "dancing" for you
Quote:Who knows they still might make it really, that or they're probably runts. I just know when I went to lock down and candled them they were definitely alive but I could see space in there so not nearly as big as they should be. Which is odd considering all eggs were set the same day and are supposed to be the exact same breed. I wish you luck with yours, just don't give up on them. I'm glad I didn't(and still haven't). That's for sure.
Quote:Oh don't worry, after everything I've been through with this whole process the first time around I have nothing but faith cause it's all you really can have when it comes to life-right?
