10 Silkies and 10 Salmon Faverolles are officially on lockdown! Silkies due on Tuesday 2/18 and Favorelles due on Wednesday 2/19.
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Big for button quail.Big? They're still the cutest little thimbles!
I candled the first bunch today (day 7) and all of the light color eggs are "swimming" and veiny. The marans are absolutely impossible to see through. Any suggestions on candling those? I'm weighing them, but have no clue about the air sac or development.
Wow, I'm glad you found what works for you. It sounds like hatching can be really tricky in your area.Locked down a day early. Hatch should be on Wednesday. Of course it will be on a day I am running mom around to doctors and for tests 2.5 hours away from home. out of 15 eggs, 2 were removed on day 8 when I candled. Unlike most of you, I only candle at most twice with the last candling being done on lockdown. A lot of times I only candle on day 18 for shipped eggs. The less handling the better for my hatch results my records indicate as I hatch at high altitude. I also normally run humidity near 70% for teh first week then bring it down to around 50% until lockdown. I find my air cells are pretty close to where they need to be doing this. The first week I incubate shipped eggs pointy end down in a constant motion turner, then switch them to the Nurture Right for the last and I have found that no matter the outcome, my air cells have always returned to where they should be and as the vein web grows, it fixes the air cell in its proper place.
This hatch humidity has been a nightmare to keep constant and instead of refilling the ports once a day, it has been more like 5 or six times a day. I will be glad when this hatch is over.
You have a Nurture Right? My top tip to greatly improve the built-in candler is to use black electrical tape to cover the white plastic around the light, which stops light bleed. As for seeing through darker eggs, all you can do is get a much brighter light, and just hope...
This is what I did to my NR360 - it greatly reduced the light leakage, focusing the light to the egg. (Please pardon the dust, lol)View attachment 2027584
This was very effective for my lighter colored eggs, but the light on the NR360 is maybe 200L, so not very strong. Now for my harder to see-through eggs, I used electrical tape on a 400L flashlight to create a soft, formable seal while candling. It works well, but I would suggest a much brighter light to try and get through darker eggs -
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Nice! I will try that if I can't find a bright flashlight. My husband has one that will shine a direct light to the end of our 5 acre lot, but i don't think he'll let me put tape in it. Lol. Better order one though as I really want to know what these marans are up to! Everyone else is doing their thing, so hopefully they are too. Thanks for the tip!
Oh, thank you! I appreciate that!I use a small high lumen flashlight that works really well but it's no longer available for sale on Amazon. I ordered a couple more that look similar to what I have (1200 lumen) because my friend needs a good candler too. I'll let you know what I think of them!