Need Help Candling Eggs

I put 12 eggs from my Silver Laced Wyandottes in the bator on March 1st. I have been trying to candle them and am not having much luck. What exactly am i looking for. Several websites said to look for veins running throughout the egg. So far I just see the yolk moving around as I turn them. These are brown eggs and I know it is harder to see, but any help would be appreciated.

i have been told to wait till day seven. you have more to look for. and you will handle the eggs less.

wish i could help more, this is my first time, mine were set March first. I have another batch though, and when i candled them i actually had three and once you SEE what you are supposed to SEE, then you get it.

i hope you have a good candler and a dark room, that helps with the brown eggs... which mine are...

tf

Thanks for your response. Looks like we are expecting on the same day as I set mine on March 1st also. Right now i am using a Maglite and my hand so the goos candler is a laugh. Where can you find one at a reasonable cost??

I would think by today you would start to see something. Tam is right.....good flash light.....DARK room. The darker the room, the better you can see. Are you sure they are fertile?

My DH made me one, and it really, well, didn't work so well.

So i bought a cool lite candler from Meyer Hatchery. I needed some other things from them anyhow, including the book by Stromberg about Successful hatching.

One of us remind the other when it is time to candle...

tf

Okay TF do we candle today or tomorrow??? THis is your reminder.

Nasco Farm will have the candler and supplies you need. I candle all my eggs for eggs to eat, not to incubate. We have an incubator, but haven't used it yet. WE have a 40 or 50 egg incubator. But when I candle my eggs, (I've done it for years), I can tell what is the yolk. If I see a "floaty" a dark spot, I usually don't do anything with that egg. Save it for ourselves. I know this is different frm what you are doing. All we have is brown eggs and I've never had to do it in a dark spot. My candler looks like a heat lamp with a place on top with a hole in the center that I set the egg on.

:) Kathy

yeah, the TDA was supposed to give me one for grading my eggs... he never came back by, i think the nieghbor scared him off LOL

i say Saturday. i'll have more time, plus i have some set to hatch 22, 23, 24 and 25th. i have to pick them up to see the date. so i can do most of them, and handle them less...
do you know what size air sac to look for ,e tc?

somewhere someone posted a link, or maybe it's in my email.

get back with you later.

tf

If you put a toiletpaper roll on the maglite and set the egg on that so all the light is directed thru the egg in a darkend room, it works fine--unless you're candling bantam eggs;)

cool idea!

OK Williams, i have determined that tonight is the first time for candling mine that are due the 22nd... i will take pics if that will help, you could take some too, and we'll compare notes!

mcamden has a thread where she posted actual VIDEOS of her candling. i will look for it and bump it up, that may be simpler...

then i will candle some each night for the next few nights, as i have due dates through the 26th...

tf

Hi TamaraFaye--you are probably way past needing this, but the Storey books on Poultry and Chicken Raising (2 books by different authors) both have pictures of what the air cells should looks like at different ages. Good luck!

This message was edited Mar 7, 2008 9:42 PM

I have candled right before hatch--couldn't see anything but movement--kids thought it was cool

those Storey books are on my list of things i need to buy once i sell some chicks & spring comes so i can sell more eggs & buy less chicken feed LOL

btw, with a gassy baby & another kid puking, i decided to wait till tomorrow night!

:-P
tf

well i candled about 100 eggs. starting to get the hang of it. pitched 19, some questionable i'll cjeck again in three days.

but WOW, when you finally see what you're looking for, INCREDIBLE!

thing that helpd, hold egg real still so yold doesn't move, with air sac at top. candle lite will warm egg, then that will cause movement!

what does it mean, a red line, but no veinig, encircles the egg?

tf

here is a link i was looking for to help us. i definitely have some BAD eggs i need to toss, the red ring thingy...

tf

http://shilala.homestead.com/candling.html

also [haven't looked yet, came from a book]:

had to edit and refine the search, looks like it was worth it. hope this is helpful to many!

http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/Avian/pfs32.htm

When I candle eggs, I sit on the floor on my windowless bathroom with the light off, and I use a flashlight with the egg set on top of it. The DH came home and caught me doing that a couple of times. Haha! He sure was surprised!

culled a bunch of bad eggs tonight, those links werer really helpful. now i have three peeps to hatch Tuesday!

most of what i culled were shipped to me. and a lot of them had been in the Brower incubator. so we will see what the problem is when i "break out" the eggs... see link above

TF - Sorry you had some bad eggs. I am going to candle mine again today and see if I can tell more. I saw most of the link you sent above, but on dial up several pics did not load. Will post more later.

Sheila

I just candled my eggs again and out of 12 i have 9 with good air sacs and movement. 2 look to be infertile and one is showing no movement with the big red blood ring surrounding it. will post more once I check them out further.
Sheila

toss that blood ring before it causes you greif!

Okay newbie with more questions. I candled my eggs again today. Can't seem to see any movement and the air sacs seem to be about the same size. I have kept the humidity at 58 to 60 %. HELP I am getting very nervous. Do they slow down in movements as they grow??? I see that more of the egg is darker than before showing the embryo has grown, i think. Still so new at this so need some moral support.

Sheila

you won't see much size diffference in 3 days, look for the air sac size on day 14. meanwhile, could be an indication of low humidity.

i have found that holding the candle there till they feel the warmth helps them to move a little. the darkness is also the yold getting squished down at the bottom.

you are on day 10, right? you will see more at day 14. main thing is use your eyes and nose to toss bad eggs before they leak toxic fumes to the good ones...

tf

i am on day 13 if I put them in on the first of March, correct??? My humiditysays it is reading correctly, 58 to 60 %, correct. how much of the egg is supposed to be air sac at 14 days????? approxiamately 1/4 correct????

Oh my Gosh, supposed to tell with your nose. Havn't been doing the sniff test. Feel like a neglectful mother.

Sheila

hey, i just read that yesterday, thought it made sense [no pun intended!].

some of my air cells didn't look big enough, so i checked the water trays and refilled them.

have lots of moving peeps in there!

my nine year old helped candle them all last night. he got really good at spotting blood rings. though a few he thought were clear, weren't. we have a couple hens that lay blotchy eggs. i found if i can find a spot that is clearer, and keep my eyes on that, eventually i will see a shadow brush by.

Sam asked if those were ghosts in some of them LOL

i will see if i can find an air sac pic to post here.

here is a link i gto from the other link up there:

TROUBLE SHOOTING HATCH/INCUBATOR PROBLEMS

http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/Avian/pfs33.htm

Thanks for your post TF. I thought there was supposed to be a marked difference between day 7 and day 14. Now I feel much better about the eggs. I have figured that I can keep fretting or just let them do their thing. Either way thay will have the same results. LOL so will just wait and see. This seems to take soooooo long. Kind of like carrying a baby in the last month, each day seems like 3 or 4.

Thanks again for all of you help.

Sheila

Tamara-

Do you have any new babies yet? I regulated the humidity to 70% in the bator yesterday and am expecting to hatch tomorrow or Saturday. I am so excited. How often do you take the newly hatched chicks out and move to the brooder without disturbing the humidity for the unhatched eggs???

i wait till completely dry. some wait till have hatched. i have 23 in mine, we will see how long i can resist...

Saturday/Sunday for our first batch. monday/tuesday for hatcher#2

if you are going to be tempted to open it, plug it good & raise humidity, keep room warm & draft free.

get your nursery brooder ready!

how many afain, & what kind?

I am down to 9. But only started with 12 so that's not bad. They are Silver Laced Wyandottes from my hens and Bert the Roo. I am so eggcited. LOL this will be my first hatch ever and will be proof to my hubby, brother and father that all said I couldn't build my own bator.

Am in the process of building a hoop house for the wyandottes. That way i can have the bigger chicken house for my 100 other babies.

I just got 14 bantam chicks on wednesday. They are in the indoor brooder. Can I put the new chicks in with them or should i have a separate space for the new chicks?? Thought I would put the new chicks in a separate area til I made sure they were eating and drinking well.

What are you hatching?


How do you clean your bator after a hatch??? Do you use a bleach solution??? What part to water???

keep them separate. at least three weeks.


the instructions say not to use detregent on the styrofoam. but i used a 10% bleach spray on the bottom part. and soaking the plastic & metal liner in hot bleach water [at least 15 min]

what are your 100 other babies? where are they from?

keep the ones you just got separate from everyone 3 weeks. don't even use the same water/feed pan

i am hatching out Buckeyes, Buckhorns, Mixed Brown Egg Layers, Black Jersey Giants, & JG/Black Australorp crosses. And 4 self blue OEG, maybe one Rosecomb, one Mille Fleur D'Uccles, maybe two BLR Wyandottes.

see my thread, "eggs are here", i will post pictures later. one came out this morning!

TF, just so you know what I did. I candled and anything that looked different from the others I culled. Most were infertile, but 1 had a definite blood ring. So, hopefully, I am guessing right.

catscan, there are some good candling links in here!