The eggs that I have in my incubator are due for hatching in about one week and I am getting excited! At the end of the first week they were just barely visible through the shells when I candled them using a small flashlight.
You can see the small dark circle just to the left of the O on the egg. This was only 5 days after setting them in the incubator.
A week later and the embryos are actively moving around in the eggs and there are clearly visible vein patterns.
The embryos have also increased in size dramatically and fill about 1/3 of the space inside. The picture shows one curled against the far side of the egg.
A couple of the eggs were quitters, meaning that they had started to develop and then died for some reason.
This egg is at the same point in the incubation process as the one pictured above, but it lacks the vein development of the other eggs in the batch. The dark area of the embryo is also smaller than the normally developing eggs and there is no movement visible inside the egg. At this point I was fairly certain that these eggs were not viable, so I removed them from the incubator so they wouldn't rot and cause problems for the healthy eggs in the batch.
In a few more days I will stop turning the eggs so they can prepare for the process of hatching. In a week I should be enjoying the peeps of a new round of baby chicks, meaning spring is officially on it's way!
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