Noobies and a 10 day candle

[Helena Handbasket]

I had hoped to post this on Sunday...lets just say life has a way of taking interesting turns, so here it is Wed AM.

Things just didn't happen right for us to candle at 7 days...so we were finally able to at 10 days, last Sat night. Lisa lays brown eggs, and not particularly light brown either, so we had a little trouble getting the light right to see through. Finally we did and we were at first disappointed because they ALL look just the same! Well, close to it, a couple look a bit more speckled on on end, but her eggs are often speckled...we thought we can't possibly have 11 good eggs, so DH took one out to the garage to try to carefully open (in case it was very smelly...not wanted in the house). To our surprise, there was a chick developing! The airsacs all look...well, a little bigger than I'd expected from looking at the pictures at https://www.backyardchickens.com/LC-candling.html

I took several pictures, which I didn't want to include with this post, so's not to sneak up on anyone kind of squeamish...I'll include a link at the bottom where you can see the pics.

DH said he didn't know if he broke the yoke when he cracked the egg, or if it was just that way...it wound up pretty much all over the dish. Those of you with a lot of experience in this could have a look and it'd be much appreciated.

You might remember from my introductory post that I'm pretty much the 'thermostat' of this unit. Most the time I've got it right on target, but once in awhile we'll get a drop to 97, or a rise to 103, so I've been concerned about varying temps at critical development points, but overall, it's been fairly stable, but I'd like to not have to watch it so closely!

We HAVE determined that we will be getting a regular thermostat VERY soon!

The website with our sink-abator & other pics:
https://sites.google.com/site/chickhatch/

Thanks!

Judy

 

[Ridgerunner]

I recently candled 18 chicken eggs on day 7 and marked 3 as not developing. I marked them put them all back in the incubator and candled again at day 14. I only found two that were not developing, so I got rid of them. They truly were not developing. The other one I had marked at day 7 as not developing was the first one to hatch. That egg was not all that dark brown either, compared to several of the other ones.

The conclusion. Have patience, especially when you are just starting out.

 

[Helena Handbasket]

Well, we have another week to go...and I have to go on a trip the next day. DH is gone during the day so patience shouldn't be a problem. I'm just surprised that they ALL seem to be developing...we thought we might have done several things wrong to even get to this point! Beginners luck (or blessings!) for sure!

 

[Helena Handbasket]

Well here we are on day 21! 2 pipped early last evening and hatched just a bit ago. We still have no bad smells so I'm guessing the other 8 will be hatching soon! I've been so excited I can't sleep, good thing my daughter will start the driving. We won't get to watch the others hatch as we have to leave in a couple of hours. Just glad I got to watch what's happened so far!

Wish I had time to post pictures! And I'm grateful to everyone's posts about these things. Not much on this thread but I've been reading everywhere else