We're eggpecting!

Candling is simply the process of shining a bright light through the egg in a dark room to see what’s happening inside. Think of it as backwoods ultrasound for poultry pregnancy. At this stage, viable eggs usually show a network of fine blood vessels spreading outward from a small dark center, that’s the developing embryo!

Of the 19 eggs that arrived, 6 showed no visible development, which suggests they were either not fertile or did not survive shipping. This isn’t unusual with shipped eggs, 🥚eggpecially🥚 when they’ve already spent several days in transit.

The remaining 13 eggs are developing nicely, and the vascular structures are clearly visible when candled. Very 🥚eggciting🥚 indeed.

In addition to candling, I’ve been monitoring the weight of each egg throughout incubation.

For duck eggs, the target is a total weight loss of about 11–13% over the full incubation period. For this particular hatch, this is going to be a little bit more complex because we’re dealing with two varieties of ducks that have different average egg sizes and different incubation periods —28 days for the Pekins and 35 for the Muscovies.

This is where an 🥚eggcell speadsheet🥚 comes in handy. I weigh each egg regularly and compare the results against a projected weight-loss curve. If eggs lose moisture too quickly or too slowly, the incubator’s humidity can be adjusted to bring them back on track.

So far, it’s taken quite a bit of on-the-fly humidity adjustment and some improvisation with egg placement inside the incubator, but on average we’re tracking close enough along the respective 🥚eggspected🥚 curves.

There’s definitely room for improvement here, so we’ll have to stay vigilant about this!

While the incubator whirrs away, life in the coop continues.

Bucky, one of my more gentle roosters, had been getting bullied by the others recently, which unfortunately resulted in some damaged tail and back feathers. So for the moment he’s enjoying a quieter life indoors while things settle down.

Since his feathers need time to grow back, I knitted him a small sweater to help keep him comfortable.

He seems to be taking the situation in stride.

We’ve set him up with a little pied-à-terre so he can convalescence in the peace and quiet of his own coop. But he’s currently doing his broody little victorian poet thing, turning away all visitors — so photos of his new digs will have to come in a later update.

Over the next couple of weeks, the embryos will grow rapidly, and we’ll candle the eggs as they progress.

Early on we’ll see increasing complexity as the embryo develops. Later, the opposite should happen — the growing duckling eventually fills so much of the egg that it starts to block the light completely.

Here’s to healthy days ahead for our 13 little orbs, may we soon meet 13 little borbs. Thanks for birdwatching with us, more updates soon.

xoxo

P