03/18/2026
We have babies!! 🐣 Today is Day 8 in the incubator, and it’s the perfect time to give these eggs their first candling! For all you non-chicken-parents, candling is when you hold a light up to the eggs to check their viability and development. It helps you know which eggs are forming chicks, and which eggs are not. Any eggs without embryos, or if they have any hairline cracks, need to be removed so they don’t rot (and potentially explode!) in the incubator.
Photos 1 & 2 show forming embryos in the eggs. You can see veins forming, and the dark circles are the tiny embryos that will grow into the fully-formed chicks! Photo 3 shows an egg that is empty; it is significantly lighter in color than the other eggs, with no visible veins or embryo. This egg will be removed and discarded.
We started off 8 days ago with setting 37 eggs into the incubator, and tonight I only needed to remove 3; crossing our fingers all remaining 34 eggs fully develop and hatch!! Stay tuned, we’ll be candling them again at Day 18 before they officially go into lockdown before Hatch Day on Day 21!! 🐥🐔
