Trying to determine egg fertility

[DonyaQuick]

Uuuuggghhhhhh this is so frustrating. Pics from today, which is day 14. These are two pictures of the same egg rotated a quarter turn between pictures. It's one of the eggs I had hope for early on but it just isn't changing. You can see there is a non-round shape in there. It floats around when I change the egg's orientation and maintains that C-shape as it goes, but it has no visible movement outside of that. No obvious veins, no pulsing, etc. This is exactly what happened before with this same hen's eggs. The eggs that developed and hatched for me last month were getting pretty dark by this point, not half glowy.

 

[Cool_Catrules456]

Uuuuggghhhhhh this is so frustrating. Pics from today, which is day 14. These are two pictures of the same egg rotated a quarter turn between pictures. It's one of the eggs I had hope for early on but it just isn't changing. You can see there is a non-round shape in there. It floats around when I change the egg's orientation and maintains that C-shape as it goes, but it has no visible movement outside of that. No obvious veins, no pulsing, etc. This is exactly what happened before with this same hen's eggs. The eggs that developed and hatched for me last month were getting pretty dark by this point, not half glowy.

View attachment 3225414
View attachment 3225415

Yeah, duds. Sorry about that. It happens.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well now I am in a brand new pickle with this.

So all my hen's eggs were duds. They've been cold and out from under her for a week and I finally sucked it up and cracked them. Nothing but yolk mess.

However, my hen will just NOT break her broody state, not safely anyway. I tried after that photo I posted - it's a long story. I have broken a different broody hen before and instead saw some really disturbing things when I tried it with this hen, so we're done with that and she's back broody again. I am roosterless now and can't give her new eggs of my own. A very kind person gave me 10 eggs from a flock that is still making fertile eggs for the season. I put 4 of the eggs under my hen (which made her extremely happy) and the other 6 in the incubator to watch as a control. Unfortunately I think I picked some harder-to-candle eggs to go under my hen vs. what's in the incubator. My plan was to check on day 5 if it was going slow and then try to just ensure my hen had fertile eggs under her. And if she somehow can't get developing eggs going under her, I can give her a couple incubator babies to still give her the chicks she so badly wants.

Unfortunately it looks like I'm ending up in the latter case. The new eggs under her are on day 5 and still look like a yolk floating around, while 5 out of the 6 I put in an incubator show clear development and movement - and the dark area stays put if I rotate the egg. Maybe she's never been warm enough? Maybe I really did manage to pick 4 interfile ones to put under her?? I have no idea. She doesn't leave them except for 15min breaks once per day to eat/dustbathe/etc.

So now my immediate burning question is: by day 5, should the dark area keep floating right to the top when the egg is turned manually? I can't tell that from static image candling guides and realize now I was dumb to put the more difficult colored ones under my hen.

(Sorry for the bold text; I know I ramble and not everyone wants to read all that to get to the main point of the post)

 

[Cool_Catrules456]

Well now I am in a brand new pickle with this.

So all my hen's eggs were duds. They've been cold and out from under her for a week and I finally sucked it up and cracked them. Nothing but yolk mess.

However, my hen will just NOT break her broody state, not safely anyway. I tried after that photo I posted - it's a long story. I have broken a different broody hen before and instead saw some really disturbing things when I tried it with this hen, so we're done with that and she's back broody again. I am roosterless now and can't give her new eggs of my own. A very kind person gave me 10 eggs from a flock that is still making fertile eggs for the season. I put 4 of the eggs under my hen (which made her extremely happy) and the other 6 in the incubator to watch as a control. Unfortunately I think I picked some harder-to-candle eggs to go under my hen vs. what's in the incubator. My plan was to check on day 5 if it was going slow and then try to just ensure my hen had fertile eggs under her. And if she somehow can't get developing eggs going under her, I can give her a couple incubator babies to still give her the chicks she so badly wants.

Unfortunately it looks like I'm ending up in the latter case. The new eggs under her are on day 5 and still look like a yolk floating around, while 5 out of the 6 I put in an incubator show clear development and movement - and the dark area stays put if I rotate the egg. Maybe she's never been warm enough? Maybe I really did manage to pick 4 interfile ones to put under her?? I have no idea. She doesn't leave them except for 15min breaks once per day to eat/dustbathe/etc.

So now my immediate burning question is: by day 5, should the dark area keep floating right to the top when the egg is turned manually? I can't tell that from static image candling guides and realize now I was dumb to put the more difficult colored ones under my hen.

(Sorry for the bold text; I know I ramble and not everyone wants to read all that to get to the main point of the post)

Wait untill allmost hatchday, then switch the eggs out of the incubator and give them to the hen. That should work. Take the eggs away if they don’t develop after 3 more days. And replace them with fake ones, or golf balls. What ever you have on hand.

 

[Tonyroo]

On day 5, nothing should be moving or floating around. What you should see is a dark spot on the side of the egg with a spider web veining blood vessels.

 

[Cool_Catrules456]

On day 5, nothing should be moving or floating around. What you should see is a dark spot on the side of the egg with a spider web veining blood vessels.

True, but theres a chance they could be behind on development. Just give a couple more days just to be 100% sure. Whats the worst thing that can happen?

 

[DonyaQuick]

True, but theres a chance they could be behind on development. Just give a couple more days just to be 100% sure. Whats the worst thing that can happen?

Doubling my current number of chickens instead of adding just a few and then my husband being mad that we have to hurry up the conversion of our old shed to a bigger coop. I thought I'd either have more incubator duds or be able to see in the others enough to pick and choose before the incubator ones were full of wiggly beans.

Well the real worst actually would be that I somehow screw this up yet again and end up with zero chicks for my hen which seems unlikely given the incubator ones. I just don't know if it's her that cause the 4 eggs to not develop, so I guess the others stay in the incubator for now. She can unfortunately tell the difference between real and fake eggs somehow so I'm inclined to leave her with the duds for now (gives me a chance to check them again to be sure anyway).

On day 5, nothing should be moving or floating around. What you should see is a dark spot on the side of the egg with a spider web veining blood vessels.

Thanks! I wish I'd asked that before since the movement would've told me I had duds in my first batch much earlier. I might not be able to see clear vessels well in the eggs my hen has even if they exist (2 are dark speckled and 2 are blueish) but I can definitely see the dark area floating around all over the place. If it isn't formed up more in place tonight then I guess I'm probably just looking at 5 developing ones in the incubator.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Pretty confident my hen is on 4 duds. Day 7 and glowly eggs with a mobile blob that moves fast. Incubator eggs look good and are super wiggly.

Time for some math fun. I was thinking about whether to give my hen the fertile eggs now or wait, and if I wait do I reserve any in the incubator, etc. I decided I should look at the odds that I was just unlucky to see if I'm being paranoid about my hen's incubating ability.

At the moment I have to guess at fertility rate since I don't want to crack open all the duds, so this is still a guessing game. I have read that transporting fertile eggs can result in up to a 50% hit to fertility. My drive was not long compared to what mailed eggs experience, but it's also late in the season. Many people in my area aren't even selling fertile eggs anymore since even with a good rooster-to-hen ratio, there chickens are molting, mating is down, and so on. I cracked open the one obvious dud from the incubator today and indeed, it didn't look fertilized - so perhaps the others I put under my hen aren't fertile either. Anyway, between the time of year and the car ride, I think it's not entirely unreasonable to assume I might have had only 50% fertility rate by the time I was putting things under my hen. So, let's say I had 5 duds out of 10 eggs before any went under my hen.

What are the odds then that I chose 4 duds out of 5 in 10 eggs? Unless I'm too tired right now to have any business doing this, I believe that would be...
(5/10) * (4/9) * (3/8) * (2/7) = 0.024
Just a 2.4% chance. Low probability doesn't mean impossible, but...that is not a promising number and therefore will not be giving my hen those wiggly eggs early unless I'm looking at a long power outage or something.

When it's time for lockdown, assuming I have >2 healthy eggs in the incubator, I think I will give my hen one good egg and hold the others back to sneak the chicks under her to maximize the chance of her accepting chicks while minimizing the risk to the total chick count if the 4 duds really are down to her rather than a low probability set of choices I made.

Frustratingly, I can't seem to find anything about broody hens having trouble incubating truly fertile eggs that isn't to do with behavioral problems like leaving the eggs for too long, smashing them, etc. None of that applies to my hen...so maybe I really am just being paranoid over just straight up bad luck. I'm still not taking those eggs out of the incubator though lol.

 

[Cool_Catrules456]

Pretty confident my hen is on 4 duds. Day 7 and glowly eggs with a mobile blob that moves fast. Incubator eggs look good and are super wiggly.

Time for some math fun. I was thinking about whether to give my hen the fertile eggs now or wait, and if I wait do I reserve any in the incubator, etc. I decided I should look at the odds that I was just unlucky to see if I'm being paranoid about my hen's incubating ability.

At the moment I have to guess at fertility rate since I don't want to crack open all the duds, so this is still a guessing game. I have read that transporting fertile eggs can result in up to a 50% hit to fertility. My drive was not long compared to what mailed eggs experience, but it's also late in the season. Many people in my area aren't even selling fertile eggs anymore since even with a good rooster-to-hen ratio, there chickens are molting, mating is down, and so on. I cracked open the one obvious dud from the incubator today and indeed, it didn't look fertilized - so perhaps the others I put under my hen aren't fertile either. Anyway, between the time of year and the car ride, I think it's not entirely unreasonable to assume I might have had only 50% fertility rate by the time I was putting things under my hen. So, let's say I had 5 duds out of 10 eggs before any went under my hen.

What are the odds then that I chose 4 duds out of 5 in 10 eggs? Unless I'm too tired right now to have any business doing this, I believe that would be...
(5/10) * (4/9) * (3/8) * (2/7) = 0.024
Just a 2.4% chance. Low probability doesn't mean impossible, but...that is not a promising number and therefore will not be giving my hen those wiggly eggs early unless I'm looking at a long power outage or something.

When it's time for lockdown, assuming I have >2 healthy eggs in the incubator, I think I will give my hen one good egg and hold the others back to sneak the chicks under her to maximize the chance of her accepting chicks while minimizing the risk to the total chick count if the 4 duds really are down to her rather than a low probability set of choices I made.

Frustratingly, I can't seem to find anything about broody hens having trouble incubating truly fertile eggs that isn't to do with behavioral problems like leaving the eggs for too long, smashing them, etc. None of that applies to my hen...so maybe I really am just being paranoid over just straight up bad luck. I'm still not taking those eggs out of the incubator though lol.

Take the duds and put them in the incubator, if they start to develop then the hen is to blame, if not idk. (If at the inpropper heat they should be able to develop later.) If not then give her *Some of the fertile eggs. To test it. If all goes well with those (wait 4-5 days) and they continue to develop give her the rest.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Take the duds and put them in the incubator, if they start to develop then the hen is to blame, if not idk. (If at the inpropper heat they should be able to develop later.) If not then give her *Some of the fertile eggs. To test it. If all goes well with those (wait 4-5 days) and they continue to develop give her the rest.

I worry if they did develop I'd not see the changes until I had another wiggly bean or two - and then if I'm honest with myself I'm not going to have the will to put it in the fridge to stop it at that point. Then I'll have a staggered hatch on my hands because of me being a sap.

All 10 eggs did actually start in the incubator at first since I had to move my hen's nest box and wanted to get her settled before I put them under her. If I crack them open at the end of this I would expect at least a stray small vein or two or a blood ring to be visible if they started and quit. I do plan to open them up at the end.