I think I'm going to set eggs tonight- 11/3/11

[OldChurchEggery1]

I'm sure your eggs will do fine! I have 18 eggs in my Octagon Eco and as far as I'm concerned, Brinsea does a great job designing their incubators. I set mine on Sunday so they're a good bit behind yours. I'll candle them in a week and then I can say how things are going. 14 were from an auction here and 4 are from my own coop. I figured with shipped eggs this time of year I could expect between 2 and 6 to hatch, so throwing in a few from my coop will hopefully provide chick body heat should it be needed. They're liable to be hardy mutts anyway since only my old black sex-links are laying right now. Everyone else is busy fussing over their fresh new feathers.

 

[Sphinx]

So, tomorrow will be day 16 for my eggs. I can do two turns, with the last one at noon. However, I'll be gone until mid-afternoon on day 17. I could probably arrange to have someone come over and turn the eggs a couple times, but I'm wondering how necessary it would be at that point in the game?

 

[Sphinx]

Ok, I have tried and tried to resist (and managed to successfully NOT candle for a good 5-6 days), but tonight I decided to candle the eggs one last time.

I am 99% sure that only one is alive, if even that.

: When I look in there, there was a dark shadow, but it didn't seem to be as big and all consuming at day 17 as the candling pictures showed on the FAQ. If you look at it from the one angle, yeah, it does. But, if I turn it to another angle, it doesn't seem big enough. The one that seems like a maybe is two days behind. I could see some details, but nothing moved.

I'm trying to decide if I regret candling or not- I'm kind of sad now, but on the other hand, if it turns out I'm right, and this isn't going to work out, at least I've mentally prepared myself for a bad result.

 

[Chinchilla2]

I've got one in my 'bator right now that if I hold the candler at one angle it's good and dark but if I catch another angle, not so big and dark in there. However, I did get lucky enough to make out a little bit of movement on it so don't give up on 'em yet. Usually at this stage of the game I rarely see movement even if I stare at the egg for an hour. I'm guessing my wanting to peek and their wanting to nap keep occurring at the same time.