I can't tell which end of the egg is pointy....help!

[Cowdoggin]

Just got back on here to give you some more info on the Temp Gage and I am glad that you incubator is finally starting to stabilize its temp.. didnt think about it at the time with my "Short Term Memory" as I suffer from CRS, (Cant Remember Stuff/sh**) anyway the Temp Gage is very touchy, so you have to make 'micro' adjustments.

I would Not recommend washing the egg..The eggs actually have a coating on them to help prevent bacteria from getting into the egg. When you wash them, you remove that coating. Even if you use just plain water.

And anyway I did that this year w/o thinking and lost most of my hatch. When we looked inside the eggs to see why the chicks/ducklings didnt make it. the fluid around them had a greenish color to it.. been hatching eggs for 5 years now, and this was the 1st time I had ever seen greenish fluid around the babies..clear fluid, but never green..the only thing I did different was wash some of the eggs..

I have used a dry cloth on them to remove some of the dirt, though..doesnt work very well, but a little is better then nothing..

 

[Cowdoggin]

HollyDuckFarmer if you are holding the light in one position you may not see the embryo. You have to slowly move the light over the egg until you see a dark spot, then watch for it to move. Sometimes there are ‘shadows’ that can be miss taken for the embryo and sometime the embryo just does not move. Scratching the egg will help stimulate the embryo to move. But at 7- 10 days there is a visible embryo. And it does move ALL Over the place. So spotting it can be a little hard, you have to be patient and watch for it. Sometimes you have to re-check the egg a little later. (you can mark it w/a pencil) Even at 5 days you can see a very small ‘red’ spot in the egg. That is the embryo. But just holding the light in one position, you can miss a lot.

JitterbugFarm it’s the same with the air sack.. Sometime you have to move the light in different direction toward the ‘top’ of the egg. It might be small, but you can see an air sack. However, if you see a bubble in the egg, then the air sack has been damaged and its no good.

HollyDuckFarmer candling the eggs really should not effect the out come of your hatch. As you know, A Hen/duck gets off her nest for about 10-20 minutes (or ½ hr) two to three times a day to eat, drink, stretch and w/duck take a bath.. Our policy here when candling is no longer the 10-15 min out of the incubator or away from Mom.. I usually incubate at least 4 batches a year, + some broody girls, and candling has never effected the out come, even when we were candling almost everyday when we first got in to incubating.. So I am kinda confused as to ‘why’ it seemed to have effected yours.. Just odd that it did..

On a side Note: We learned last month, that the incubator can accidentally get unplugged for 24 hrs in the 1st 5 days of incubating and not effect the out come of the eggs.. Ours got unplugged on day 4 and the temp dropped down to 75*.. And We didn’t lose any eggs from it.

 

[JitterbugFarm]

That's interesting.... I tried to candle some of the Dominique, Choco Orp, and Brown Leghorn chicken eggs I put in the Brinsea incubator 3 days ago, but I really didn't see much (untrained eye I'm hoping). Even with moving the candler around, I didn't see anything other than a dark blob at the bottom... I'll try again in a few days and see if anything is more prominant. They are from three different sellers, so I'm assuming its just me and they're not all infertile.

The duck eggs went in this morning and the new incubator is still holding steady at right under 100....I feel better about that at least

 

[JitterbugFarm]

Actually....I just tried to candle the eggs again with a mag-light flashlight instead of the candler....and I can see VEINS! Only slightly in the Domonique egg, but the brown leghorn definitely has vascualr development! woohoo!

 

[Cowdoggin]

Ok forget the Candler..use the flashlight.. maybe get a better quality candler later..

AND GOOD!! you see something..Yaaaa Its always exciting..but What is really neat is when you see the fetus move all over the place..then when they are about 18+ days you can hear them peep sometimes..SO PEEP BACK!!! The best part though, is watching the babies hatch..

Part of the problem w/that candler, is it just may not be bright enough for the darker egg color..the darker the egg, the harder it is to see..

And go online and look up egg incubation, some sites have really good pictures of the process from day 1 to day 18+.. They show you the Clear Eggs, the bad eggs and the Quiters..learned a lot by viewing the pictures and ..again.. taking notes on my own eggs..