Candling An Egg On The Wrong End?

[The Rinaest Rina]

So, today is Day 7 for my clutch of eggs. (I'M SO EXCITED) I candled them accordingly, small-end-down on my built-in incubator candler. My two light-brown, speckled eggs were easy to see through and I could see the little moving, living, veiny bean inside. I'm not certain what breed the mother of those two is, but I love them.
I also have a banty egg and a game hen egg in there, and these were doing great as well. I could easily see the moving embryos.
However, when I moved on to the other assortment of eggs (mostly olive, tan, green, and blue), I found this in almost ten of them.

This is pointy-end down. The air sac is in the top, which can't be seen.
I couldn't see veins, it was too dark to see through the blush in these ones. My disappointment was immeasurable, as I figured, well, they're dead (because veins are what you look for, right?).
Before I gave up, I remembered that I'd seen a candling video where the woman put her candler on the top of the egg, looking down through the air sac and leaving the eggs in their carriers. I knew those eggs must've been pointy-side down. So I got the flashlight on my phone and used that on the top of the eggs.
This time I could see some veins in all of them! Some were hard to find, but they were there, and in one or two I was able to see a dark spot as well.
I didn't get a picture of mine, but this is a screenshot of the candling video that pretty-much looked the same, though mine were a bit darker.

They had nice rings in the top around the air cell. I don't know what the light patches on the bottom of my eggs are about...

Are the dark ones dead? I don't know. I couldn't see a beating heart like in the lighter-shelled eggs. But I did see veins, so I'm holding on to hope. I might candle again before lockdown and see if there's anything to see.


I also have a cuckoo Maran egg in there that I could see nothing at all in, not even a yolk smudge. I left it in because maybe the shell is just too thick to see through and it is alive. Erring on the side of caution here, because my little sis named that egg Happy and I refuse to be the reason we gave up on him. >:I
If there is no Happy in the end, it was probably an infertility issue.


I guess what I'm trying to ask here is, should you be able to see lots of veins if you candle the pointy end? Do you think my doubtful eggs are doomed? Anyone have experience with this kind of thing? And this might be something to think about if you've gotten one of these incubators with a candler on it.

 

[casportpony]

Welcome to BYC! Darker eggs are really hard for me to candle, so I usually don't candle them until they're almost ready to hatch. You might want to consider buying a candler or a pocket flashlight as I think they might work better than a cell phone.

 

[The Rinaest Rina]

Welcome to BYC! Darker eggs are really hard for me to candle, so I usually don't candle them until they're almost ready to hatch. You might want to consider buying a candler or a pocket flashlight as I think they might work better than a cell phone.

Thanks Casport! I might. I might also be able to make one by putting something soft around the rim of a flashlight.

 

[Susan Skylark]

Dark eggs are hard, as long as that dark spot is getting progressively bigger no worries, shadow is good! Some of my quail eggs the embryo just jumps out and attacks you, others are impossible to see anything but shadow, but if that shadow gradually fills the egg you’re fine. Red is also good (like shining a flashlight through your hand) as it indicates blood and therefore life, green is probably infertile, but this won’t tell you if the embryo dies. Compare similar sized eggs within a hatch or at least percentage of egg filled, if you have one half full on day 18 it is probably a quitter, also sloshy eggs tend to be dead embryos, most should kind of slowly glide or even sludge around inside the shell. When in doubt check in a couple days unless it stinks!