Well, we candled our eggs after 8 days. I suppose that it depends whether you’re a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty sort of person as to whether the results were good or poor. Of our 17 eggs, 8 are developing normally.
The picture isn’t crystal clear, I’m afraid, but if you look carefully, you can see a small dark circle, which is the embryo, surrounded by a web of blood vessels that are beginning to encircle the yolk.
Others show no sign of anything happening, other than a dark cloud, which I understand shows that the embryo has failed to develop. One had a red ring, where the embryo had started but then died.
I might try to rig up a better camera to see whether I can get some clearer picture. Of our batches of eggs, the Scottish ones have 4 fertile out of 6, the Lincolnshire ones have the same, but our own 5 have a zero fertility rate.
We’ll give ours another chance when we do a second hatch, but I’m afraid that if our rooster is firing blanks, he’ll have to be culled. We can’t run two cocks together, because they’d fight. And we do need a fertile male.
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