Susan Skylark
Songster
Day 5 on my trauma/2 week old eggs. Candled again and then opened a couple from each group. Kind of interesting, nothing scientifically ground breaking but curious. The control group (0) are just eggs, no trauma, no age. The trauma eggs are simulated shipping eggs with either two (2) or three (3) days of traumatic movement. The old eggs are eggs that were stored for 2 weeks pre-incubation. I tried to use similar shelled eggs for the pictures but they didn't always cooperate. I note that several of the eggs had veins growing on the membrane or stuck to it when opened or looked clumpy on candling, I have noticed this phenomenon in most of my 5-8 day old eggs when candled (contents sluggish to move) but it doesn't seem to affect chick health or development or be a result of shipping/no shipping/or anything else, I think it is just normal as far as I can tell. Curiously the old egg is the only one without the issue, significant? I wish I had a cool computer program that could scan the extent and health of the vessels but I don't so you'll just have to guestimate with eyeballs like me. And no, my candled quail eggs DO NOT look like this to the human eye, this is what the camera sees, awesome pictures but NOT realistic, please do not use them as a guide to candling eggs!
There you have it, whatever 'it' is! In general, incubating fresh, unshipped eggs is your best bet for healthy embryos and chicks, but that being said, even traumatized or geriatric eggs can develop into viable, if less prolifically veined, embryos. I really want to take some of these to hatch to see if chick vigor or health is affected, but I really don't have space to mess with them as the temps plunge. We'll go to Day 10 on the rest and see what happens, also have 5-6 eggs from the geriatric bunch going into the incubator every 2 days so the oldest will be 3 weeks old pre-incubation, we'll see how increasing egg age affects viability and development and early embryonic death.
There you have it, whatever 'it' is! In general, incubating fresh, unshipped eggs is your best bet for healthy embryos and chicks, but that being said, even traumatized or geriatric eggs can develop into viable, if less prolifically veined, embryos. I really want to take some of these to hatch to see if chick vigor or health is affected, but I really don't have space to mess with them as the temps plunge. We'll go to Day 10 on the rest and see what happens, also have 5-6 eggs from the geriatric bunch going into the incubator every 2 days so the oldest will be 3 weeks old pre-incubation, we'll see how increasing egg age affects viability and development and early embryonic death.
