I have candled and I don't know what I am seeing.

[Ambiguity]

Hey, I married into some chickens this summer and my husband since his new wife has become bird crazy bought her an incubator for Christmas. I have been haunting your forum for awhile.

The eggs have been in there for eight days. Two eggs I know are good because I can see movement! Very exciting. They are my brown shelled eggs. Now for my green tinted eggs, two I think I should pitch because when I candle the shell is full of light spots which I read is bad. Half of the egg is in shadow and the other half is light. Now the other three eggs in there the shells are fine just half of the egg is light and the other half is in shadow. Is it just harder to see through the green tinted eggs? Or are they bad? I don’t want to just throw eggs out in the snow, but I would rather not have them blow up in my incubator either.

Thanks

 

[birdlover]

Your eyes are playing tricks on you. The eggs don't move until, at the earliest, day 19. I'll see if I can find you a picture chart of what to look for. As for the egg with white spots, I don't think that is an indication that it's no good. The shell is probably thicker in some areas causing the thinner areas to look like white spots. It really is very difficult to candle green or brown eggs so I wouldn't toss any just yet. Half dark sounds encouraging! Good luck and welcome to BYC. OH! I thought you meant you saw the EGG move! Ah, yes, movement inside the egg is definitely good!

ETA: Here is a website that shows photos of fertile eggs at candling. It looks as though white spots can be a sign of a poor egg but it says it depends on how bad it is if it will hatch or not. Also, none of these eggs are dark like yours.

http://shilala.homestead.com/candling.html

 

[Akane]

If it looks speckled all over it probably just has large pores. Some people don't set those claiming the hatch rate is lower but there's no real reason to throw them out unless you have an abundance of eggs to hatch.

Mhf candling has the best pics but they are for duck eggs so the days don't match up exactly.

http://www.minkhollow.ca/HatchingProgram/Candling/index.html

You can see movement way before day 19. I'll start keeping track of which ones move and are definitely alive days before I stop turning on day 18.