Hi everyone! I'm going through my very first quail egg incubation - we're on day 4 or 5. I'm not sure if the day they went in the bator counts as 0 or 1, but they went in around noon on August 11th. I've candled the lot of 42 we have in there tonight - I was able to see really good veining on 13 of them, many round masses which I'm guessing might be yolks, and quite a few that are unquestionably duds (light shines fully through). I've noticed, however, that most of my duds are the fresh/non-refrigerated eggs I put in from the evening before that sat on the counter overnight. In fact, 11 of the 14 fresh/non-refrigerated eggs are duds and one is questionable. All eggs are rotated manually 3 times a day (all sitting on a small ball of cotton in mini-icecube trays so they are all rotated on an equal angle), homemade bator but temps are monitored throughout the day and kept at 99-100F, and humidity between 45-50%. I haven't taken any out just yet. I will candle again in a few days just to confirm viability. This makes me wonder if this is just a fluke or if there's something to this? Has anyone else ever tried hatching both refrigerated and non-refrigerated eggs at the same time?
At 5 days incubation I wouldn't pull any egg that didn't stink. Candle prior to lockdown to cull infertile eggs. The clears that you pull on day 5 may be perfectly viable.