Well, life got busy and I have been bad about updating our progress. Truthfully, from the outside it doesn't look like much is going on. The incubator is still humming along in there. The cats are still napping on top of it. Temperature is still holding consistent at around 99 and humidity is at 35% or so.
I candled the other day. I tried to get pictures, but apparently my camera doesn't like to work in the dark. Check out this website though. They have some interesting photos.
http://www.avianweb.com/candlingeggs.html
Candling is great fun. These eggs are all beige, so you can really see what's going on in there. There are definite veins and at this point there is a dark vaguely chick shaped blur. Sometimes you can see the little chicklet move about. It is very, very cool.
Out of the 26 eggs I set, there are 12 still developing. There are 7 buffs, 3 blue/black/splash and 2 black/lav eggs still going strong. Out of the 14 that I tossed, about half had blood rings and the rest were clear. Blood rings happen when the embryo starts developing and then quits. It shows up in the egg as a dark ring when you candle. The ones that were clear were most likely damaged in transit. Eggs have an air cell that is easily detached with rough handling. Most detached air cell eggs just won't develop.
I wish I could get pictures for you, but you are just going to have to do a google image search. Suffice it to say, things are still perking along in there. Middle of next week we will hit lockdown and then in a week we will hopefully have chicks. Yay!
2 comments:
It is a little sad that so many of them didn't make it, but I guess that's expected. They are going to be so sweet and adorable once they're hatched!
We get 13 more additions in March from the Chick Chain program. I am wondering how the assimilation will go for the new guys...
Travel by United States Postal Service is tricky. If I get 50% hatching out of shipped eggs I call it good. It is actually pretty miraculous that all of the eggs make it intact. Those boxes get tumbled and tossed and thrown about. While it's sad that so many never develop I always factor the loss into egg ordering. If all 26 had hatched I would have been in a world of hurt!! I'll be happy if I can get 10 or so out of it. :)
Yay on your new additions! Do you know breeds yet? Is Lexie excited?
Post a Comment