Erka97
Chirping
- Mar 30, 2017
- 237
- 91
- 96
Hello everyone!
So, a while back I found this very interesting article detailing the development and genetic testing of the first known set of identical avian twins... A pair of female emu chicks born in 1994!
(https://eurekamag.com/pdf/003/003152379.pdf)
Imagine my surprise and excitement when, a short while later, I encountered on a facebook group a breeder who was showing off a huge egg their hen had laid. It's over 900 grams! I ended up buying it from him and setting up an experiment with my college [I'm a biology student currently] to see if I can hatch it and test it as described in the study. The school also provided me a larger and more reliable [but less well ventilated] incubator that was unused in one of the labs.
Not only that, but the breeder's hen laid another such egg about a week later and I have bought that one too, as well as one or possibly two of its "normal" siblings [the breeder has only one emu pair.] I have decided to share the process and outcomes of this experiment on this thread.
I understand this is likely to be a rather depressing thread, giving the unlikeliness of twin eggs hatching, but perhaps I will get lucky and end up with the third known [to me, anyway] surviving set of emu twins!
Here is an image of the first egg next to a shell from a previous hatch of emus.
To make matters worse, I found a crack running almost the entire length of the first [and larger] twin egg, which has now been incubating almost three days. I have repaired it with candle wax and determined that the membrane didn't seem to be broken, so now all I can do is wait.
Here is a [admittedly poor quality] image of the repaired egg to show extent of the crack. I suspect it either happened in shipping, or more likely when I tripped over the box the egg was in while it was waiting to go into the incubator. I didn't notice any issues at the time, but I can't imagine the egg got cracked just sitting in the incubator as it's been doing since then. I'll get a better picture later.
So, a while back I found this very interesting article detailing the development and genetic testing of the first known set of identical avian twins... A pair of female emu chicks born in 1994!
(https://eurekamag.com/pdf/003/003152379.pdf)
Imagine my surprise and excitement when, a short while later, I encountered on a facebook group a breeder who was showing off a huge egg their hen had laid. It's over 900 grams! I ended up buying it from him and setting up an experiment with my college [I'm a biology student currently] to see if I can hatch it and test it as described in the study. The school also provided me a larger and more reliable [but less well ventilated] incubator that was unused in one of the labs.
Not only that, but the breeder's hen laid another such egg about a week later and I have bought that one too, as well as one or possibly two of its "normal" siblings [the breeder has only one emu pair.] I have decided to share the process and outcomes of this experiment on this thread.
I understand this is likely to be a rather depressing thread, giving the unlikeliness of twin eggs hatching, but perhaps I will get lucky and end up with the third known [to me, anyway] surviving set of emu twins!
To make matters worse, I found a crack running almost the entire length of the first [and larger] twin egg, which has now been incubating almost three days. I have repaired it with candle wax and determined that the membrane didn't seem to be broken, so now all I can do is wait.
hoping for the best outcome
