I want to thank BYC . . .

fowltemptress

Frugal Fan Club President
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17 Years
Jan 20, 2008
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Formerly Texas, forever Texan
. . . for teaching me something new every time I visit. This recent burst of gratitude stems from several successfully incubated eggs that had been cracked while in transit, and I patched them up using candle wax. For some reason I never would have thought of that, and had I not stumbled across that tip I would have just tossed those eggs when they arrived.

I wasn't sure about the best way to patch up the eggs, and at the time the only wax I had available was from little red birthday candles. I figured what the heck, lit one, and just let it drip wherever a crack needed it. By the end the red wax drippings made it look like I had bloody eggs.

A month later I received more eggs in the mail, all intact except one. I decided that one egg was beyond repair. Not only was it cracked across almost the entire egg, but both ends were crushed inward. The thing was basically being held together by nothing but membrane. I don't know what possessed me to go grab a few candles. It took forever, but I sealed up every crack on that egg, and it was almost completely covered in blobby looking red wax. I couldn't even candle it, there was no space to see anything. I tossed it in the incubator, expecting nothing. I couldn't imagine the egg even being able to breathe.

20 days later my eggs start hatching. Imagine my surprise when I hear cheeping from the waxed up egg! I never imagined the egg was even developing, so I never considered how the chick would manage to pip the egg through all that wax, much less zip it. I considered, and decided the egg would probably be a little goopy, since there was so little porous areas for anything to evaporate from. This meant the chick was probably more at risk of drowning than otherwise, so I couldn't really wait to see what would happen. I decided since I'd made the egg unhatchable, I'd hatch it myself and steel myself for dispatching whatever deformed, hopelessly weak little chick came out of it.

I broke through the wax and egg with tweezers, and felt sick a the sight of all the goop in the egg. I thought I had made a mistake, and the chick wasn't done forming. Still, I was committed, and zipped around until I found the beak. There was a tiny bit of blood, so I stopped there and left the egg in the incubator for several hours, satisfied that, if nothing else, the chick could breathe and wouldn't drown.

Towards the end of the day I tested the membrane . . . no blood, so I carefully commenced hatching. Once I'd zipped all the way around I left him like that, figuring I'd leave the chick to slide his own way out. That way I wouldn't feel as bad about doing everything. I couldn't get a good look at the chick through all the goop, and I went to bed, expecting either a dead chick in the morning, or a premature one I'd have to put down.

The next morning there was a healthy little chick stumble-walking around the incubator! He cheeped up a storm when he heard me come in, and when I opened the incubator I was greeted by the stench of a huge blob of greenish tinged goop smeared across the incubator. Apparently it was exactly what I suspected before I started hatching the egg . . . nothing could really evaporate, so everything just stayed put in the egg, waiting to foul up the bator.

That was a week ago, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with my little waxy chick. It's the strangest thing, because only three eggs hatched in that batch and I would have never thought one of the successful eggs would be the over-waxed, hopelessly banged up egg in the bunch! Thanks so much, BYC, for all the weird things I learn through this site.
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