Incubation, Day 8

Last night, I unplugged the incubator and carried it into the darkest room in my house at night (The bathroom), to do a little candling.  

For Candling I use my big Mega Light.  I don't have a Candler yet, but this seems to work ok.  Some eggs I find hard to see through, like dark shelled eggs, and the Easter Egger Eggs.

When I candle, I shine the light through the fat end of the egg, and sort of rotate the egg and tilt it a bit to see what's going on in there.  At this stage, you can see blood vessles, and a dark shape in there.  As I watched I could see the dark shape moving around.  It's pretty neat, and gets more exciting as the eggs grow.  Candling can be addictive.

So This is what I had, and what I have now.

Started with:                                       Fertile:

6 Easter Eggers                                    3(?) Easter Eggers (the shells are hard to see though, so I left them all in)

11 Phyllis Diller (Polish X Frizzle)         8 Phyllis Diller

10 Cochin                                            8 Cochin

6 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte              5 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte

9 Polish                                               7 Polish

4 Silkie X                                            0

4 Silkie                                                2 Silkie

So, I'm not sure what happened with the Silkie X's.  I had a bantam cochin X in with Rotten Ronnie, and he was giving it for all he was worth with her and the little silkie.  I know that perhaps I should have given a few days more before I started collecting eggs (for all the breeds), so the first ones I collected didn't surprise me about not being fertile.

I was most surprised to see that the Blue Laced Red Wyandotte eggs were growing.  I really wasn't expecting it.  My roo got so frost bit this winter on his feet that I thought it would make mating hard for him.  But I guess where there is a will there is a way, and Frosty is able to do his job.  I'm really excited about this!

After I candled, I filled all of the water trays back up, put the incubator back on the turner and got it going again.

In my last post I was having temperature troubles.  Well, I turned the temperature up a bit at a time, until it reached a good temperature.  It seems to be holding quite well now.  I'm not sure why it had the drop, but I hope it stays good now.  As for the clicking, I tried the vaseline on the pin that holds the incubator, and haven't heard a click since!  I am really, really happy about this!