This past Sunday, the 14th, seven eggs went into the incubator. I candled them yesterday, on day three, and all seven have veins! I am beyond excited! While this development may not be constant and we may lose some throughout the incubating period, it’s exciting to know our boys are doing their duty. Here’s to the nail biting wait of the next candling session on day ten.
Tag Archives: incubating
Day 12
Most people who incubate their own eggs tend to candle them on day 5 to see if there are any fertile ones and to remove those that may rot and cause a catastrophic explosion. Not I. Not being able to find the appropriate flashlight seemed like an impossible task in this house, which is hilariously frustrating given how much of a flashlight-bug the Hubster is.
So…if I finally got to candling the eggs, why aren’t there any pictures? The simple answer is this: the best flashlight was on my phone, which has become primarily my camera more than anything else. It worked better than I thought it would, too. I was able to have a large flat surface to hold the egg on and I didn’t have to worry about cupping my hand around the light or any other interesting movement that could easily result in a dropped egg.
We’re proud to announce that, with only 9 days to go, 6 out of the 7 eggs that we set are fertile with little jumping beans in them! This is awesome! We lost out rooster, Gimp, to the local coyote this past Thursday (along with young Lucy and our matriarch, Edith), so we’re hoping we might have a boy out of those six. Even more exciting is the concept that one of the eggs I’m certain is Edith’s, which means we might have an off spring to two of our lost sweethearts.
If things go well, we’ll have:
1 Barred Rock x Rhode Island Red
1 Comet x Rhode Island Red
4 Easter Egger x Rhode Island Red
Obviously the first two would continue to be brown layers, but the last for would most likely than not be GREEN egg layers given the cross. Very exciting! I don’t know if we’ll keep all the chicks, as we’ve given someone who helped donate to the incubator the option of taking her pick of the first batch, but we also have a good assortment of layers that are a little over a month old (3 Black Australorps, 2 Blue Andalusians, 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes, and 2 Buff Rocks).
Needless to say, we might even be attempting another clutch after this batch is hatched in a bid to make sure we get one of Gimp’s boys. We’ll see.
