Is it hard to candle Marans eggs?

[claud]

I've hatched RIR eggs for years until my roo died a couple of years ago(and then I fed my addiction with eggs from friends). I've acquired a flock of Marans and want to hatch this spring. Is it possible to see through those dark shells? I have a regular electric hand-held candler.

 

[Katy]

If you've got really good dark eggs it can be very hard to see. I'm thinking getting an old slide projector like Cyn has and trying that.

 

[kstaven]

Very difficult to almost impossible to candle with absolute certainty for the first 10 days of development if they lay eggs on the top of the color scale.

 

[Picco]

My penedesenca eggs could not be candled for the most part and their color/darkness was similar to marans. I'm not sure if its the same in marans, but the problem with pene eggs seems to be the bloom. No matter the darkness, it seems as though the bloom is nontransparent, letting very little light pass through it. I could hardly make out dark shadows even in the lightest eggs.

 

[claud]

aww shoot. I love candling and watching them grow and I don't want any to blow up on me - I guess it was pretty silly of me not to think of this before. I might have to add some light egg layers to my flock just for candling fun. I did notice that the membrane under the shell is really tough in my Marans eggs. My Marans are hatchery birds so their eggs are on the low end of the scale but they still are probably going to be a problem to candle.

 

[Katy]

If you're worried about one exploding just do the old sniff test!!

 

[speckledhen]

For once, I'll have to rely on that test myself! I'll be incubating Welsummer eggs in the spring and I love to candle, so this will be hard for me, especially if even my handy-dandy projector candler wont work!

 

[Picco]

Can fresh eggs explode in the incubator within 21 days? The only eggs I've had explode were a few I took from broody hens and didn't know how old they were, so I'm guessing they could have been quite old.

 

[Katy]

I've never had one explode , but there's been a couple that flunked the sniff test and when I threw them out in the yard they were definately bad. These were fresh eggs when I put them in too.

 

[fdnick]

I have had two eggs explode, both were from fresh shipped eggs so maybe the jostling upset them?!?!?!