how do you tell if a guinea egg is fertile?

[lizzard14]

I ask this because i have 4 nests now. One guinea has been on hers at night since april 5th, she is not on it during the day though. One of the other nests, the guinea is on it at night and most of the day,but this just started a couple of days ago. I cracked open about 6 eggs and every one of the eggs had a white spot on the yolk. Does this mean that the eggs are fertile? And is there any way you can tell if the egg is fertile by candling or do you have to wait about 15 days to tell? I candled every one of those eggs and there are probably 80 eggs to see if I could see anything developing and the only thing I could see was a shadow, that was probably the yolk. I took out the ones that I though were clear and I cracked 6 of those and found the white spot, so I put every one them back. I was just trying to get some of the eggs out of the barn, because they busted some of them from them being stacked. I took the nasty ones out and put fresh hay under all. Then I put the eggs back like I found them. LOL.. Anyway, any information would be greatly appreciated.

 

[PeepsCA]

There is no way to tell if a Guinea egg is fertile unless you incubate it (for usually between 7-10 days, unless you really know what to look for, then you can candle a few days sooner), or you have to crack a few open and look for the bullseye (Blastoderm). The eggs above are fresh eggs that have not been incubated at all. If you see that what you've cracked open are fertile, you can assume/hope the other eggs are fertile as well, but that's about as good as it gets... unless you know a reliable psychic, lol). Typically if you have enough males, eggs this time of year should be fertile.

Ohh boy, 4 nests and you messed with all of them? The Hens may abandon the nests now since you removed the eggs, put fresh straw down and returned the eggs... they aren't like chickens in that they don't care about their nests/eggs being messed with. If they feel their nest is not safe they typically abandon it and start a new pile somewhere else. Hopefully you put all the eggs back in their correct nests, or that could cause some major hatch time line differences.... Hens will often leave the nest with the first strong keets that hatch out, and then leave the rest to go cold. The nest the Hen has been on only during the night for the past couple weeks probably won't hatch many keets out (if any), repeated starting and stopping (warming and cooling) of the developing embryo usually kills them.

If they do return to the nests as if nothing happened, then I'd mark all the eggs first chance you get, so you know if more Hens are continuing to lay fresh eggs in the nests. I'd candle again in a couple weeks and if there is a mix of newer developing eggs I would toss all the old undeveloped eggs... but if it's mostly a bunch of bad eggs you might want to only remove a few at a time, over a couple days, so the Hens don't abandon the nest.

Good luck, let us know what your Hens decide to do