Our Blue Cochin had 3 eggs under her. One baby hatched, one egg got smooshed and the baby died and this egg is still there. I candled it and I'm unsure. It has the line for the air pocket, but on one side it has a lighter area just below the line. Here is a picture. This is as good as I could get and pretty much shows the area of concern. The really dark spot on the end of the egg is dirt that the mama got on it.
Here is another from a different side.
It is hard to tell from a picture--but it certainly looks like it was developing. I think I can see blood vessels. When is it due to hatch? I find the chicks stop moving much right about the time they are in position to hatch...and then some just never make the hatch even though everything looks right up until then.
Good Luck!
This late in the game, I'd sure want to see more veins than that! Usually, if the veins are faint or gone, so is the chick.
Is there any movement at all? Have you tried listening to it close to your ear? I tap on the egg with my fingernail while I listen.. that will usually stimulate some kind of movement or noise.
I hate to be negative... but it doesn't look good to me.
I'm really wondering about that lighter patch, that looks odd to me. I'm not sure how far along the egg is. The mama hen was sitting on one egg for a while and the baby was hatched and dead. Not sure what happened there. We checked under her and there was 3 eggs under her she had collected at some point we didn't even know she had. She had been sitting and so was another hen so there was one hen laying eggs and she didn't lay every day. So we arn't sure how far apart the 3 eggs were. The one hatched the other day and then one got smooshed and from the looks of it I would say it had maybe a couple of days left. So this one could be due to hatch anytime. I just don't want to pull it and then it was good.
One other thing, the egg does have an odd color to the shell. Sort of like when an egg is old and gets bad. My son pointed that our today.
I don't know.. it's not an easy call.. but it won't hurt to leave it I guess.. if it's bad she will know won't she?
Nutmeg sat on eggs like that.. & I got 9 chicks out of 16 eggs.. *shrugs* I'd wait. bc most of her eggs looked like that when i candled them.
Thanks everyone. I'll give it a few more days.
We checked the egg again this morning. It had a hole and some broken shell and blood. The baby was moving though. The hole was on the wrong end so I'm not sure what happened, maybe the mama moved around too much and broke a hole in it or it was trying to hatch from the wrong end. We had one baby hatch once from one end of the egg to the other rather than around the large end like they should. We waited a while and kept checking and the baby was moving. I just checked again and no movement so I'm guessing it died. Poor little thing.
Give it another say smedge, what have you got to lose. Sometimes no movement doesn't mean much. Hay.
I'm so sorry..
Thanks ZZ. The poor little thing just wasn't ready.
I think all our broodies are finally done. We started in January with the first 3 babies hatching in February and now several months later we had so many chickens go broody and hatch eggs that our flock of 40 something chickens has turned into 80 something. Some of those are roos and will become dinner. I think I counted 8 or 10 Buff Orpington babies, a barred rock, some RRI mixes, some ameraucana mixes, a Sebright, an australorp, a few Blue Cochins, and a whole bunch of others. WHEW!
