How late in development is it safe to candle duck eggs

[JadeComputerGal]

Hello. It's me, the pain, again. I really do research things before I ask here, but I get such conflicting results that I'm afraid not to ask people who know the correct answer.

We have a mama peep sitting on seven eggs we candled last Saturday and found to have embryos. (I did another post about this at the time.) These are from three different hens and looked to be a various stages of development. Because of that, we have no way to know when we should expect them to hatch.

The problem is that we expected to see a little rocking of at least some of the eggs, or hear some pecking, or something. There is no sound or movement at all, but we're really on the fence about candling them again. I've seen some people who say you can candle them right up to hatching, and I've seen others who say you shouldn't turn them or even move them in the last three days because it can kill the duckling. Since we don't know what the last three days should be, I'm afraid to even pick them up.

Would it be safe to carefully pick them up and candle them tomorrow, or should we leave them alone for at least another week to see what happens? I also saw a few posts from people who use a stethoscope to check for a heartbeat. Would this be a better option so we don't have to move the eggs?

Thanks so much again!

 

[MeepBeep]

Candling is not harmful, at any time... You can candle the first day to the last day, without any harm, just make sure your hands are clean and the eggs are handled carefully...

I do always get a giggle out of the people who say don't move or touch them the last three days, as if it's a death sentence... Clearly they have never seen a broody bird in action that still moves eggs all the way to the last second or what happens once the first chick hatches and bulldozes every other egg...

Candle away if you want, look for the internal pip or movement...

 

[JadeComputerGal]

Thank you so much, Meep. Yes, some of the things I've read really do make it sound like a death sentence for the peepling, You said kind of what I'd been thinking since mama pushes the eggs around all the time. If it's dangerous, why is she doing it? Even her just getting situated on the nest rolls the eggs around, and it seems lately like she rarely gets situated. (We're obsessing over this, so we got a coop cam to monitor what she's doing in there.)

What we did last weekend was get a plastic 13x9 box and put a bath towel in it for cushion, then we gathered the eggs and took them to our media room so we'd have complete darkness. We used this device--> http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ION2XYG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 that I bought because we're novices and I wasn't having much luck with an LED flashlight. I'm very pleased with the device, especially at such a low price. We found seven 7 embryos out of 18 eggs she was sitting on. We will very carefully gather them in the same way this weekend if we don't see any activity by Sunday and see what's in there now.

Should I reasonably expect any results with a stethoscope? I'd love to hear the little heartbeats or movement otherwise if that will work!

Thank you again!!!

 

[MeepBeep]

Should I reasonably expect any results with a stethoscope? I'd love to hear the little heartbeats or movement otherwise if that will work!

Can't say as I have never done that, but just by coincidence I did pickup a brand new stethoscope at Goodwill 2 days ago, I was just going to flip it on Ebay but I might keep it an try it on a few eggs...