is this a fertile egg???

[fishman65]

OK forgive me but it has been a while....I know if you crack open an egg and it has the bullseye it is fertile but how do you tell if an egg is fertile "without" opening it????

 

[DUCKGIRL89]

Candling it.

 

[TinyChickenLady]

Quote:
Yup

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

Candling will do no good unless you start to incubate the egg. You would need to wait till day 6/7 to see anything and know if it is fertile via candling.

 

[fishman65]

how can you decice if an egg is fertile without incubatiing it??? will a float test work..reason why....i am getting a lot of guinea eggs and only have a handfull of males...since it s a 28 day incubation period i only want to set the fertile eggs...very time consuming to set non fertile eggs

 

[NonnasBabies]

Quote:
The only way is to incubate it for 6-7 days like FLChickens suggested. Then you can see if there is veining!!

 

[yinepu]

a float test won't tell you if an egg is fertile.. all you can do is start incubating some.. candle around day 7.. see which are viable.. toss the rest.. add more eggs (mark them with the date).. and continue to do it that way until you have a full bator (or as many eggs as you want to hatch).. however doing it that way you WILL end up with staggered hatches

Staggered hatches like this CAN be done.. (i've done it successfully before, for a lot of hatches).. but for someone who is not used to doing a staggered hatch you can run into problems if you don't keep a close eye on air cells and humidity control

 

[fishman65]

not what i wanted to hear but i guess it is the only way

 

[Bantam Username]

I candled at 4 days and could already see veining in those that were fertile. Just a bit less time to wait to find out.

 

[yinepu]

Quote:
yeah.. but at day 4 it makes it so there isn't really enough time between the staggered hatches to make life easier... you would run into more problems having batches 4 days apart than you would at 7