Candling an egg

I finally uploaded a video of one of the last eggs being candled.  This was three or four days before it hatched.  There isn't much noticeable movement until 23 seconds, and if you keep watching you'll see it continue to move until the end of the clip.

Chickies are Coming!

We candled the eggs again two nights ago and this morning it was time to take the eggs off the egg turner.  They're suppose to stop turning for the last three days before they hatch so that the chicks can get lined up and ready to pip and hatch.

I candled them this morning as I took them off the turner and set them in the incubator again and I saw signs of life in all of the Silver Laced Wyandottes, which is great news.  There were three New Hampshire eggs that were clearly bad so I pulled them out and one New Hampshire egg that I think is bad but I'm not completely sure, so I left it in the incubator but off to the side.  

 

It won't be cool to have all of the New Hampshire eggs be bad, I'm wondering if they were even fertile when they were sent to us.

The best part is that I got a video of a candling and you can see movement inside the egg.  Watch this clip and pay careful attention at about the six second mark.  I hope other people squeal with excitement like I did.

The First Candling

We finally candled the eggs that are in the incubator.  The eggs have been in the incubator for 7 days and the eggs themselves are between 10 and 14 days old.  I'm no expert when it comes to candling but I know we should be able to see some solid forms inside the eggs at this point.  While we did see some signs of life. we didn't see very many.

We candled the New Hampshire eggs first.

Egg #1 definitely showed signs of life.  The dark mass in this picture was moving around, coming closer to the shell and then back towards the center.  We also saw some of the lines that I believe are veins.  It was a good start to our candling adventure.

Egg 1