The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: laurelrus on May 23, 2016, 07:48:45 pm
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First eggs are due to hatch on Friday. We candled at 7 days and discarded one that wasn't developing at all.
Should we candle them again before day 19 or just wait and see?
Thanks very much
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I normally candle them again at 14 days just to check that everything is progressing as should be. So you could do it again now just to make sure.
Good luck with hatching, I've got some coming on Sunday. :fc:
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If I'm confident the eggs were fresh when they went in (and therefore unlikely to become addled whilst in the ncubator) I don't candle at all. Opening the incubator affects both temperature and humidity and if they're not viable there's nothing I can do about it anyway.
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I would candle up to Tuesday, nothing wrong with opening the incubator for a bit up until then. A hen leaves her nest for eating & defecating too, the new Brinseas even include a cooling option to mimick this.[/size] Plus I want to know how well they're doing, regular candling will show you when embryos stop developing which can be very useful to know if a batch goes wrong.
[/size]So Friday's the big day? :excited:
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Thanks very much for the advice.
Eve - Friday is day 21, it's come round quickly! I have the electric hen ready so hope there are chicks to use it!
We're making the brooder box in the next couple of days, I feel like I should be boiling water and collecting fluffy towels!
:excited:
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Why candle?
My wife's a doctor and one of her rules is don't order a test done if you're not going to act differently based on the outcome. I find that very helpful advice round the farm, e.g. before taking an animal's temperature, make your mind up as to what you will do based on the result - if normal then do this, if over 39.5C do that.
Applying that to candling, what will you do if the candling shows that some eggs died last week? If the air sack is too small/big can you adjust humidity in your incubator to compensate and will it make a difference at this stage?. IMX, candling late is of little use because the chicks take up so much of the egg that its hard to make out anything at all.
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Thanks benkt. I suppose my reason for candling would be that if there was an egg or eggs not viable we'd remove them from the incubator then we wouldn't be waiting to see if it would hatch when the others had hatched?
As this is our first attempt it's all a big learning curve but it would be really great to have a few chicks by the weekend!
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My hatches so far this year, all fresh eggs and set on the same day, have hatched over a four-day period, during which time I've opened the incubator once to remove the dividers on day 18 and on day 22 and 23 to remove chicks before shutting the incubator down on day 23. I always open unhatched eggs and, from a batch of 80, find a few infertile and a handful of late(ish) death in shell, but since the overall hatch rate is generally good and there was nothing I could've done about the others .....
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I suppose my reason for candling would be that if there was an egg or eggs not viable we'd remove them from the incubator then we wouldn't be waiting to see if it would hatch when the others had hatched?
Exactly right :)
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We decided to candle and 3 out of the 5 were as they should be on day 18 and the other two were no good.
So we've taken out the disc and put paper towel in as instructed and will keep the incubator closed now and hope for the best!