Topic of the Week - Candling Eggs

[gimmie birdies]

Candling is important for...

eliminating the clears (day 5) no veins

eliminating quitters-(day 10) dark shadow in a small lump, no veins.

Of course your egg has 2 ends, large air cell end and the tip point end.

day 16 making sure the point is dark. Below is what you don't want to see. By day 16 the tip should be dark, if not the egg may still hatch, but would take more days in the incubator.

Day 18 you candle, and check if the eggs are ready for lockdown. An egg with clear point is not ready, like above,

but an egg with not enough slope, or some clear by the line of the slope, even if day 18 is not ready. See below...

The above egg is day 18 but does not have a slope and see the clear by the slope line.

The egg should be dark with slope large end, like below...

And then no candling after lockdown.

 

[The Ranch Girl]

I use a candeler

 

[The Birb King]

View attachment 3492630
I use a candeler

Same lol

 

[FeatherProfessor]

If you want to win a candler or an incubator with a built in candler, check out this contest over on the online poultry show.

 

[Duckduckgoosie]

If a hen is setting, do you candle her eggs?

 

[Jesitxmarie]

Absolutely!! You can candle the eggs everyday if you wish, while your broody is off the nest. I have a fabulous mama that just hatched out 100% of her setting eggs. I even candled one egg while it was pipping! Just handle the eggs very gently and avoid turning them from end to end, throughout the 21 day process.

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

- What do you use to candle eggs?
I use a flashlight to candle the eggs, as I do not have the flashlight that came with the incubator. The incubator was gifted from someone and they kept the flashlight. I do not know what kind of flashlight I have, but I would recommend one that has only the white color setting instead of multiple flashlight colors because the latter tends to be weaker.

- What about candling dark-shelled eggs?
I have incubated a few dark-shelled eggs before when I was incubating eggs from my own large fowl flock. The eggs unfortunately were not fertile, which I had figured because Phoenix does not do his job correctly. When I candled the green eggs, they were difficult to see through, and since they had not been fertile I do not have many tips, but be sure to have a powerful flashlight and to candle for longer before you decide the egg has no movement inside of it. With the shell being hard to penetrate, it may seem like there is no movement and no embryo but you have to look close. if you want to use the most of the flashlight's light, then take a toilet paper tube (the one with no paper left on it) and fit in on the part of the flashlight where the light comes out, and then put the egg at the other end. With this trick, it is much easier to see through the shell of dark eggs.

- When do you start candling eggs?
I start candling eggs at day four, then I candle every other two days, until it is close to lockdown and I stop candling that much and slow down. During lockdown I never candle in fear of ruining the hatching process. Be sure to record all of your candling results on paper so you have a reference.

- What do you look for when candling and what are the signs you need to give up on an egg? (I.e. what is normal, what are the warning signs, etc)
Veins and an embryo are the first signs of life that you will see, and nearing day six is when the embryo gets more active and you can see it moving. Signs that the embryo unfortunately did not make it is if you see a blood ring within the middle of the egg or a ring of blood circling the top. if you see this, then these warning signs will more often than not be accompanied by a dead and bleeding embryo that has floated to the top. Sometimes the embryo quits developing at a very early stage, or there will barely even be an embryo at all. Examples are when the egg is completely clear, or almost clear with a few veins that look very weird. And by "very weird," I mean veins that look not whole, broken up and more like squiggly lines than they are supposed to be. Those are all of the signs I have seen during the candling process.

 

[Susan Skylark]

A Beginner's Guide to Phone Candling Quail Eggs:

I'm fairly new at this (hatched one batch of coturnix quail 3 weeks ago and another is on day 13). But I'm having trouble finding a good pictorial guide for novice quail egg candlers (there's a great guide on this site using a really good candler but nothing for the clueless neophyte whose best light source is their phone). I've seen quite a few panicked posts by newbie quail raisers thinking their eggs are defective since they can't see veins/embryos, little realizing quail eggs are hard to candle (small, dark, thick membrane, splotchy shells) and their inauspicious light source probably isn't showing up many of the details.

With quail eggs, as long as there is a large (half or more of the egg) reddish shadowy mass that is gradually taking up more and more of the space inside the shell, it is probably a good egg. I candled my latest batch daily using my phone light (better than the incubator candler or any flashlight in the house and most newbie quail raisers already own one!) and took pictures with a decent camera and put together a little guide (attached).

Day 4 is about the earliest you can see anything, and that is mostly just a reddish tinge in a slightly larger yolk shadow. By day 13 there is very little of anything visible except the air cell. Strangely on day 10 almost all the eggs had veining in the narrow end but it was pretty hit and miss on most eggs on most days as far as veining/embryo visibility. Overall I would say 10% of eggs might show veining/embryo on any given day so don't panic if you don't see it! The day 6 egg has a weird half and half pattern, it was a hand turned egg and the contents were a little sluggish to shift the first few days but all the rest can be considered 'typical or normal' eggs. After about day 6, candling from the narrow end showed the best detail. On day 13 the wide end was better, but even that is getting hard to see. You'll also want to compare eggs within a batch, anything that looks weird or behind compared to the other eggs probably is. You can leave a questionable egg in the incubator for a few more days to be sure, but if it smells, is cracked, or has a blood ring, you'll want to remove it. I also like to open up my failure eggs to see what is going on (egg necropsy), just don't open anything stinky!

 

[Jenbirdee]

i’m so eggcited it’s day 23 my Pilgrim goose on 4 eggs and i candled them about once a week and this time i saw the babies moving in all 4 of them !! sorry no pictures or video i don’t have a helper

 

[Eggs_Over_EZ]

It has been about 10 year since I last hatched eggs. I kept to the standard 3 x’s. This hatch I am only candling twice once on day 10 (tomorrow night) and again on day 18. (I broke down on the evening of day 7 and checked three of 13 eggs and all were fertile.) in my past I used my mobile device flashlight and it worked well. The darkest egg I candled was Welshmen and with a dark room and phone I was able to candle. This time around I am using a new Maticoopx incubator and it has a built in candler which I used on day 7 and it work very well. Cannot wait until tomorrow night.