We went out to candle the ladies eggs this evening. I made my own candler with a strong flash light and a piece of cardboard wrapped to make a cone for the egg to sit above. that focuses the light so that it shines through the egg.

I thought it would be a good idea to see how development was going. That way, if there is an egg that isn’t developing or is full of bacteria, I could get rid of it so that it doesn’t explode or contaminate the other eggs. This site has some nice pictures to follow, as does this one. The main thing was looking for the blood vessels. It’s not so easy when you have chicken that lay dark eggs. I checked Snowflakes eggs at 7 days and saw a spot in each of the eggs (the eye of a developing chicken), but couldn’t see veins. Today (day 11) when I checked I was able to see a moving chick in each of the eggs! YAY! You go Snowflake!! she’s on seven eggs.

In Sparkle’s eggs, it wasn’t as easy. She’s only been on her seven eggs for 6 days. I found three that had obvious blood vessels and 4 eggs that I couldn’t tell. I’ll candle hers again at 11 days to see if I see any moving chicks.

We tried to take pictures, but our camera sucks! Here’s the best one we got. There was a moving chick in this one. You can’t see that, but you can see the air bubble that develops along with the chick.

What are we going to do with all these babies?? We need to build a larger coop!