Water Candling

[HenHoneyGirl]

Recently I was looking for egg candling videos and stumbled across a video feathering a technique I had never seen, water candling.
Even as new as I am to this whole process of incubating eggs it totally screamed bad idea. Eggs are porous and I would assume they would be able to drown if placed in water. Also eggs have that protective coating on them that protects them from diseases. And I've read numerous things about how never to wash an incubating egg. And even though you may not be rubbing the wet egg I would think that coating just might very well come off.
Is this water candling actually a valid method to see if you're eggs have baby chicks in them? It definitely doesn't seem like a good way to actually see what's happening in your egg. the person in the video was only putting her eggs in a cup of water and seeing if they wiggled.

 

[avocado]

Good question. My candler has stopped working and it's day 14 today. I'm tempting to give water candling a go but will wait for someone more experienced to advise us...

 

[Egghead_Jr]

People usually reserve floating eggs until late hatches. Your hatch is late or most of the chicks are hatched and you have no more pips. Float the egg to see if anything is still alive. It's basically used as a last test before ditching the eggs or putting back in incubator. Use 99F water to float in and they will float or sink depending on if chick is developed and wiggle if alive.

I use a flashlight, minimum 250 lumen, to candle in dark room. Using a mostly used toilet paper roll and egg placed fat end on that. I candle three times, random candle day 10 and 14 to check air cell growth then all of them day 18 to see what will be tossed. My only reason to candle it monitor air cell growth to adjust humidity if needed and day 18 to take out all quitters or infertile eggs.