Purpose of candling before day 18

[busylizzie]

toss any clears by day 10 otherwise they might explode on you or on the other eggs and contaminate them.

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Hi! I candle early and often for a couple of reasons.
I sell eggs for hatching and I need to know how fertility is running from week to week.
I set eggs here every week and have limited incubator space. No point in wasting valuable space on an egg that isn't developing.
Hahaha, I even candle my eggs before setting them here or wrapping for shipping.

If you don't *need to know*, candling isn't necessary.

Lisa

 

[aveca]

Its a matter of opinion. In your brown and dark eggs you will not see much of anything befor 10 or 11 days so when doing those I will stay out of the incubator except to adjust humidity. At day 12 there really any guessing in the brown eggs you can see big dark shadow in there and that is easy time to separate infertile or quitters.
white eggs give an earlier show you can see a lot more going on . the tiny blood vessles and structure are a little delicate so any jarring could damage them, slow soft handeling for those. some say too much handeling causes them to quit but I dont know if thats true or not. Some just quit for reasons unknown maybe a deformity.

This is my first time in 15 years but Im pretty relaxed about it. Candled first time on day 12. and a freind who does this a LOT did it again with me on day 13 just to be sure as these were brown eggs she pulled out of 17 down to 8 eggs were fertile, rest were infertile. she showed me blastodisk as we cracked the infertile no fertilization..she said breeding sheds are slow in northeast people and chickens are just tired of the weather. and next month it will pick up.
I was pretty thrilled to see the day 12 eggs so full and nice air cells developed.

I had a very experienced freind help for an objective look. I tend to want more to be going on than actually is. Kept hoping that big healthy yolk was actually a late bloomer , glad she told me better, when she cracked it, indeed it was a big healthy yolk nothing more.

So now Ive put the eggs in the middle of the turner and leaving them alone till monday lockdown and one last candleing.

I remember sleeping through a hatch they started pipping and went to bed, next morning there were 4 out and about only one egg out of that batch of 10 failed to hatch. probably a reason for it. Its always sad thou.