The sniff test versus candling for quail eggs ???

[Denninmi]

So, I've got 80 plus quail eggs in my incubator right now.

On my last batch of button quail eggs, I candled a few times, and I wonder if that was a problem that may have contributed to my low hatch rate.

They are such tiny eggs, they seemed to cool off really fast. Working as fast as I could, they would be out of the incubator for probably 6-8 minutes to candle the batch, and already cooled considerably in that time.

This time, and with so many, I am just opening the lid and carefully "sniffing" them daily -- so far, I've found 2 definitely rotten -- the two that came dented that I tried to "repair" with neosporin and surgical tape/bandaids. They rotted right away, as I thought they might.

Does this sound like a reasonable strategy for these tiny things? Last time, I got pretty good towards the end of telling who was good and who was bad by doing this.

The advantage is, I can do this in like 30 seconds and don't have to remove the tray full of eggs from the incubator.

Candling isn't all that helpful anyway with the tiny eggs and very dark shells.

I just want to prevent rotten eggs from contaminating the lot of them.

 

[Kedreeva]

Well, a lot of people will only candle 2 times for the entire hatch... Day 10 (which is probably sooner for quail) and Day 18 before they lockdown. The bad eggs *shouldn't* explode before day 10.

However, with so many eggs, it may be more worth it the way you're doing it now.

 

[aprophet]

day 7 and day 14 here day 14 is lockdown for coturnix if it glows it goes

 

[ottovan]

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[ottovan]

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I don't know what u mean?! I guess it will need to explode!

I miscalcalateded my days I have silkies and quails due tomorrorow quails 4 days from nowthen silkies. don't ask me I was tired.