What do you candle with?

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KittyKat

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Hi all, I was just wondering what you candle your eggs with?

The OvaView looks like the most practical product available but £25/£40 + £23 for the OvaScope seems excessive, in line with other Brinsea products.

I was previously using a lava lamp bottom inside a small cardboard box with a round cutout on the top, which worked ok for brown eggs. I also tried an old torch and bike light, neither of which worked.

One of my friends was bragging about his amazing LED "bike" light, so I got him to come over yesterday. Turns out that he wasn't kidding! Best candling that I have ever seen, even compared to the best photos on the internet! It didn't do that well on the Cream Legbars (green/blue eggs with lots of pigment), but it seemed to depend on which hen the egg came from and was good enough to tell whether it was clear or not. The light is a Cree T6 from eBay and costs £6.85 delivered. Definitely well worth the money.
 
We use a Brinsea Egglume KittyKat, which wasn't the cheapest they did but still wasn't expensive. Works fine on Orpington, Wyandotte, TNN and Leghorn eggs but wouldn't work on Marans.

I'd be a bit worried about using something as bright as a Cree LED though. Could it damage the embryo in some way?
 
That isn't something which I considered. The light comes with a lens for focusing it, which we used in the most unfocused setting so at least it wasn't as bright as it could have been. I don't think it should pose any risk of damage until the embryos develop eyes properly, which shouldn't have happened yet…
 
I use a bright LED torch (only on tinted eggs, I don't have any dark eggs) and it works well and I've not had any probs with development :D
 
If you're only incubating a few eggs, what's the point of candling them at all - except, of course, just to satisfy your own curiosity.
I can understand that a commercial breeder might need to clear space in a large incubator because the fertile eggs would be moved to a hatcher at pipping, so space in the incubator could be filled with more replacement eggs when the infertile ones were removed. And I understand there is a small possibility of explosion from a bad egg, though this would seem unlikely if the eggs were clean and had been carefully inspected before incubation. However, the candling process is not without risk, and maybe it would be best to leave the eggs undisturbed if you have just a few in a home-sized incubator, and are not intending to refill with any replacements?
 
I was under the impression that a rotten egg can infect other eggs, is that not the case? There is only so much that can be done about cleaning them if they come from someone else.
 
I think it will only contaminate if it actually explodes, which of course could be catastrophic. But if the eggs aren't cracked or chipped this is most unlikely. Or of course, bacteria from a dirty eggshell can affect other eggs, irrespective of whether or not they're fertile, so in thus case candling would be no prevention. But if the eggs are carefully examined and clean, this is very unlikely to happen. Maybe use sanitising wash?
I really don't know whether it's best to avoid any interference and risk retaining a bad egg, or to candle and risk moving the eggs around and letting cold air into the incubator. Could unnecessary handling of the eggs spread bacteria from an infected one to the rest, do you think?
But, apart from being an interesting thing to do, do you think it actually does any good? I agree that the darker eggs are difficult to view, in fact when incubating quail eggs I found it just wasn't worth bothering because the patterns on them were so confusing. So dark eggs might be mis-diagnosed as infertile and discarded when they could have hatched?
 
I don't think cold air is an issue: hens get up to eat when they sit on eggs. In fact, the newest Brinsea incubators have an option to cool the eggs for up to two hours per day which apparently improves hatch rates by 2.5%.

Contamination by touch is more of an issue, of course. Gloves help, I imagine, but not sure by how much.

Apart from that, it's useful to know for statistics (were the eggs fertile/infertile?, when exactly did they stop developing?) because eggs which are not developing can be cracked open and examined.
 
Infertile eggs start to 'weep' as they go bad -small crusty spots appear on the surface, about day 14 I seem to remember. At that stage they are potentially contaminating the other eggs and could break when handled, so I think removing them early is a good idea.
 
Think of the millions you could make if you invented a candler that could not only tell which were fertile, but could also tell the sexes apart before hatch......
 
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