Do I Need to Candle ?

[Davetedjack]

I'm setting my first eggs (ever) in a Brinsea Octagon 20 with auto turning and auto humidity control (for me more automation will hopefully mean less risk).

It seems that once everything is set and running the greatest risk to the success of the process is opening the incubator and candling the eggs (adding infection, dropping or damaging, rapid cooling or sudden change in humidity etc.

If I just leave the lid on and let them run their course (I can change any settings from outside the unit) I will find out in 21 days or so how successful they have been.

Is there any real problem of not candling and removing any infertile (assuming I can tell) eggs as the incubation takes place.

Any thoughts appreciated

Dave

 

[Marigold]

Hi Dave,
It will certainly do the eggs no harm to leave them alone, whereas, as you say, candling has the potential to disturb them. Opening the incubator and the resultant cooling and humidity change isn't harmful in itself as it mimics the time when a hen leaves the nest to eat, drink etc. and in fact the Brinsea incubators build in cooling periods automatically to cater for this. Obviously there's a small risk of introducing infection but if the eggs are clean to start with and you wash your hands beforehand, again this is minimal. So, if you are careful how you handle them the risk of candling is very low, though you'll have extra expense from buying a candler and might not be able accurately to interpret what you see. It's interesting to do it, but of course it doesn't actually help the potential chicks in any way. You can always crack open any eggs that don't hatch to find out what, if any, development took place.
Commercial breeders do it in order to weed out obviously infertile egs to make more room in their incubators and thus to hatch more chicks in sequence. They then remove chicks to a separate hatcher when the eggs begin to pip. But as you're just doing one batch at a time and presumably will be drying them out in the incubator, again there's no advantage to candling. It's really just up to you, whether or not to try candling out of interest.

 

[Davetedjack]

Marigold, thanks for your reply

 

[chrismahon]

We always candle Dave, at 7 or 8 days when development (or not) can be clearly seen. We remove any 'clears' to avoid the potential for a rotting egg which can contaminate all the others. They weep, with small crusty blobs appearing on the surface. In extreme cases they can explode leaving the incubator in a stinky contaminated mess. I view candling as essential.