Just candled my first batch

[dfreas]

Either candling brown eggs is quite hard, or it takes practice. I'm not sure which, but that was stressful!

Anyway, good news! I just candled my very first batch of eggs, it is currently day 5 and 15 of 17 eggs are showing some level of development! The other two may or may not be developing - I really just couldn't see anything because they were so dark. It didn't help that I was using a giant maglite to try to candle them and balancing that in one hand while trying to turn the egg with the other was not as easy as I originally thought it would be.

I think I must have a really good Roo. The girls follow him everywhere, he is never mean to them and apparently he manages to get just about every single egg they lay to be fertile.

 

[sourland]

The darker the egg, the harder the candling for me - you are not alone.

 

[gimmie birdies]

I wish my roo was old enough- he crows, I see the ladies walk up to him hoping he will share food, and the girls are flirting, but he has not mated yet- he did the wing dance for me so soon-

 

[JDchicks]

You should come over and joins us in the Jan/Feb Hatch-a-long. A couple of us are between 5-7 days right now.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/846539/jan-feb-2014-hatch-a-long

 

[Farmer Viola]

Either candling brown eggs is quite hard, or it takes practice. I'm not sure which, but that was stressful!

Anyway, good news! I just candled my very first batch of eggs, it is currently day 5 and 15 of 17 eggs are showing some level of development! The other two may or may not be developing - I really just couldn't see anything because they were so dark. It didn't help that I was using a giant maglite to try to candle them and balancing that in one hand while trying to turn the egg with the other was not as easy as I originally thought it would be.

I think I must have a really good Roo. The girls follow him everywhere, he is never mean to them and apparently he manages to get just about every single egg they lay to be fertile.

Yes, please join us in the hatch-a-long!

You are right candling brown eggs is difficult. I REALLY wish I had started out with white eggs because there is a craaaaazy difference in how much you can see inside when you candle. Some folks buy fertile eggs from trader joe's, they're just white leghorns from white eggs, those would be GREAT to learn on - hindsight, 20/20 etc etc.

Candling - You can hold the flashlight upright in your hand, then lay the egg on it sideways to see right through it.
You can also lay the flashlight on the table, and then put the large end of the egg right up to the light while resting on the table, and then rotate. This is what I do to mark air cells with a pencil.

 

[dfreas]

Done. Thanks for the suggestion!