5 Day Egg Update

My eggs have been in the incubator now for five days, long enough that they should be noticeably developing. I decided today to take them out and candle them to see what I could see.

I rigged this desk lamp up to be my light source. The basic idea is to have a small yet bright light which you hold the eggs up to so you can see what's going on inside. At this stage of development I should see a network of veins starting to develop inside the eggs.

Unfortunately since I was handling the eggs very carefully, I wasn't able to get pictures of them as I candled. Basically, they all looked good (I think!). The Black Austrolorp eggs were definitely getting some vein like patterns. The Buckeyes were a little less distinct, but I think they looked good. I was worried when I opened the incubator that I could smell rotten egg. It's a pretty distinct aroma, which made me very nervous. I found just one Buckeye egg that looked very different from the rest. It had some extremely opaque, black looking spots. I sniffed it, and noticed that it reeked like rotten egg compared to all the rest. I decided that it must be the culprit, and took it outside for further investigation.

Looks alright, huh?

Just as I expected, when I cracked it open I found it black and rotten inside. I'm glad I found it early. Had it gotten much worse it could have exploded in the incubator and made a horrible mess on the other eggs. I'm taking it as a good sign that it was so easy to tell that this one was rotten and different from the rest. I'm hoping that means the rest of the Buckeye eggs are developing well, despite not being able to see much from the candling..... only time will tell for sure.....
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