The Chick Inside The Egg - Candling

Candling is the term for using a bright light and looking through an eggshell to check on the progress of a developing chick.  You can tell if the egg wasn't fertilized and there is only a yolk inside., you can tell if the embryo has died, and you can tell if the embryo is alive and doing well.

Unfortunately all of the Marans eggs (the dark brown eggs on the left) my sister shipped from Maryland were not fertile. The good news is that our eggs had a great fertility rate and we currently have 38 eggs with live embryos.

Here is a video I took the other morning while candling one of the white eggs (the easiest shell to see through).  If you look closely, you can see the embryo moving around. The darkest spot is the chick's eye.  Sorry about the loud crunching in the video. The dogs were eating breakfast.

Hopefully the hatch will go well and we'll have lots of chicks running around before long! Just 10 days to go!