Should I candle my eggs??

[TAMMACLEAN]

I have had eggs in my incubator for a few days now, and I'm just wondering if I should candle them. If so when should I and what type of light should I use? They are in a home made incubator. The temp has been a steady 99-100 and humidity is at 40-50%. Should I candle or should I not?? And these were eggs I ordered.

 

[sourland]

How many days is a 'few'? If too soon early development may be difficult to detect.

 

[TAMMACLEAN]

It's only been 3 days. I was thinking that I would candle them around day 16 or 17.

 

[rungirl]

Sure! And canding is really fun for kids also. I use a little halogen flashlight that has about 6 little red and white lights in it. I got it in the hunting section at Walmart. If the eggs are light or white, you can sometimes see a lot of movement in the beginning. I candle at about 7 days. At that point, I can usually tell if they are at least fertile, unless they are really dark eggs. After that, it gets difficult with colored eggs. Eventually, when I can't see through it except at air sac, I just trust that it's probably developing. The first time I hatched Marans eggs I was sure they were all dead because I couldn't see anything, but they were fine.

 

[TAMMACLEAN]

Thanks! My kids are very excited to be hatching eggs, especially since these are our first hatching eggs. We already have 10 hens, 2 roosters, and 10 more baby hens coming this week. We do have 1 sick rooster right now and hoping he recovers. And of course we have 1 silkie that we have no idea what it is. And that doesn't include the 24+ silkie eggs coming this weekend. I guess we have a small chicken math problem.....

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Unless they are white eggs I'd wait until day ten because it can be difficult to really tell much earlier than that. But I would definitely candle. Unless we're doing embryology we candle at days ten and twenty five. This not only tells us our development percentage, but also allows us to eliminate any potential stink bombs before they can go off and possibly harm the other eggs (as well as preventing my wife from throwing me and the incubator out into the yard!)

 

[TAMMACLEAN]

Thank you!