God is an amazing creator. I am still dumbfounded that a baby can be grown inside a womb in a mere 9 months! Baby chicks are grown in an egg in only take 21 days! That is so incredible it blows my mind. We have baby chicks in the making right in my master bathroom. We are incubating chicken eggs in our bathroom, which we will then keep for a few weeks as chicks. When they are old enough to be integrated into a flock my friend Becky will be taking the pullets (just a fancy name for female chickens under a year old).
I have been watching our incubator wondering if anything is actually growing inside those eggs. I have been wondering and trying not worry over these eggs, but I am so excited I can’t help it!
Based on the books and websites I am reading about incubation, candling is recommended on days 7 and 14. Some say it’s ok to candle before you incubate, some say it’s not a good idea. So, I candled only two of our seven eggs before we began incubation. What I saw was nothing. Really, the light shone in and I saw an empty egg. It was good to see that since we candled yesterday on day seven and actually saw growth inside the eggs!
You can see in the photo some of the membrane growth and apparently the dark spots are the eyes! Brielle took all of the photos while I quickly candled the eggs. I was afraid to even take them out of the incubator so I handeled them so carefully, yet quickly to get them right back to the 99.6 heat. It looks like all are developing at this point which is amazing! However, most new incubators (like myself) can anticipate a hatch rate of 50%. That is our goal. If we surpass that, wonderful! With only seven eggs and with me being so inexperienced, we are hoping for two to three to make it to hatching. So far so good! We will candle again on day 14. Here are photos of our 7 eggs. Brielle took all the photos using my IPhone!
You may be wondering what is egg candling? Simply, it’s shining a bright light on the bottom of the egg so you illuminate the inside of the egg. Our eggshells aren’t too dark, so we were able to see growth inside. In the old days they used a candle, which is why they call it egg candling. You can now buy egg candling devices, which have a powerful beam that aren’t hot to the touch or the egg. We purchased one for our egg candling: http://amzn.to/2mIaOX0.
For more information on egg candling there are some great websites available. This University website was a great resource for us:http://lancaster.unl.edu/4h/embryology/candling.shtml
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