Seeing the donut....QUESTION ADDED 7/1

[itsy]

Hey peeps....

In order to see if an egg is fertile (viable for incubation), will I be able to see the donut after the 52 hour period like in the incubation sticky? OR - will the egg need to be in an INCUBATOR for 52 hours before viewing any donut?

"52 hrs If you look closely, you can see the start of the blood island in the middle of the egg."

If I'm totally off and I'll need an incubator in order to "grow the donut".... then is there any way to tell if an egg is fertile before putting it in an incubator?

Sorry for the newbie questions. I'm used to hatching gecko eggs - where the ring is visible after a day without any sort of heating.

Thanks!

 

[LuvMyBLR]

Quote:
Far as I know, the only way is to crack em open, which of course would ruin incubation

Just have to put them in and take the clear ones out after a week and they clearly aren't developing.

 

[gryeyes]

Nope. Gotta incubate first.

You CAN check for fertility, but it requires you to crack open the egg to see the donut/ bulls-eye on the exposed yolk. Can't incubate it then. But if all or most of your eggs are fertile, then you can surmise the ones you try to incubate will also be fertile.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[joe17]

Like others have said, there is no way to tell if an egg is fertile before you incubate it. You can usually candle the egg after about 10 days to see if there is any development. I never see anything growing before then usually.

 

[hinkjc]

The only way to see the "donut" is to crack the egg open. It is not a blood spot, but looks more like a white bullseye on the yolk of the egg. If it is infertile you will just see a white speck without a ring around it. I know speckledhen had really good pic of this on byc. If I can find them, I'll post a link.

 

[itsy]

Thanks, everyone! I'm going to pick up an incubator tomorrow.

 

[cmom]

Good luck and have fun!!!

 

[itsy]

Soooo.... I put three eggs in on the 28th in the evening. It is now the 30th around the same time of night. The next night, I added one more egg.

If the first three eggs were fertile - would I start to see the donut now? I candled them and they look exactly the same as when I put them in there. Am I jumping the gun? If I candle tomorrow night and definitely don't see anything - should I just assume they're all infertile?

If they're infertile, can they be eaten? If not - could they be cooked up for the chickens? I'd hate to waste them.

THANKS!

 

[itsy]

See above post from last night....

I just candled again. No blood ring. Do I toss them or give it another night? What's the longest amount of time this could take?

Thanks!

 

[ranchhand]

LOL, I'm confused now, lemme see if I can help.

The only way to see the donut in a fertilised egg is to break it open and examine the yolk, before incubating, and once it's broken, there's no incubating.

Now, as to incubating- it varies individually, but I don't candle until a minimum of 7 days in the incubator, many folks wait until 10 or 14 days. I believe that the less handling, the better. By any of those time frames, you should either see veining in a spidery pattern around the egg or rarely, a very distinct blood ring. Sometimes, nothing will show. Remove any eggs with a blood ring and the clears.

Here's the link to a ton of info on hatching and if you poke around BYC, you'll find even more.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=48726