Black dot in egg... Help! 🥺

[Meganjade00]

Hi!

My duck egg (day 17) has this weird black mark? Please can I ask what it is?

Thank you
From a 1st time egg mum

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome to the forum! Glad you joined!

I'm not sure what that is. It looks like it is inside the egg but I can't tell if it is on the eggshell itself or deeper in the egg.

It is probably a bloodspot or a meatspot. I'd guess a bloodspot.

I'm not sure how much you know about how an egg is formed inside the hen. I'll link a simplified version of that.

https://poultry.extension.org/articles/poultry-related-youth-programs/how-does-a-hen-make-an-egg/

A bloodspot can form when a blood vessel is ruptured when the yolk is released to become the center of an egg. That may be a few drops or quite a bit of blood. That mark may be where blood has dried. Sometimes some material inside the hen's body cavity comes loose and finds its way into the egg. Neither of these are unusual. It's why I generally suggest we should open our eggs individually into a separate bowl because we never know what is inside them. Commercial hens lay those too but they candle the eggs before they package them to sell to us. Those eggs are safe to eat but can be unappetizing. They sell those eggs to places like pet food manufacturers where it doesn't matter.

The way the embryo develops that spot should be external to the duckling's body. It should not harm it at all. It looks upsetting but I'd consider it harmless.

 

[MGG]

Looks like early fecal matter. It starts to build up in the bottom of the egg at about two weeks in for ducks. By time it hatches it'll be a good sized glob. When it first starts out like that though it'll just be little bits along the sides. Nothing to worry about.