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| overcrowded |
I have a confession. Saturday morning, when my eggs were about 12 hours into incubation, I discovered that my legbar had just laid another egg. Even though my Brinsea Mini Advance has a capacity of 7 eggs (and I was at capacity), I stuck it in there. I wanted to hedge my bets- Crack Baby's shell does actually have a crack in it, and the fridge egg had been sitting in my refrigerator for at least a week, probably 8-9 days. So, I had serious doubts as to their viability. However, I didn't have the heart to take them out, just in case life had begun. So, I just crammed the 8th egg in there and hoped for the best.
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| cracked egg at 90 hours incubation |
This morning, when they'd been in there at 90 hours and 72 hours, I candled. I could see heartbeats in ALL SEVEN of the legbar eggs!! My brown egg I'm not seeing as easily, but I'm fairly confident I'm seeing the tell tale veins. It's a good news/bad news thing. I have to admit that I was kind of hoping for a quitter so that all the eggs would be in the turner properly so I could quit worrying, but on the other hand, I'm thrilled that my fertility rate is that high.
I'll keep candling daily, I think, and if/when something quits, everything will line up nicely. I have to admit that I'm kind of hoping all eight hatch though.
Here's a bottom view of the cracked egg. The crack is at the bottom (fat part) of the egg. It's not too bad of a crack, but because of the location, I was worried about sealing it up with wax, or nail polish, or elmer's glue, which is the normal fix when an egg cracks. Generally speaking, it's not a great idea to set cracked eggs. Those fixes are intended for candling/hen mishaps that happen during incubation. You can see the weakened spots because the light goes through the egg very easily.
As a side note, if you are wondering how I candle, I have a tutorial on how it works
here. Photographs were taken with my iPhone 4.
