Counting Eggs Before they Hatch!

Every time I incubate eggs, I turn into a 5 year old waiting for Christmas so that I can open presents. I want to know what I’m getting so badly that I can hardly stand myself—let alone others tolerating me as well. I peek in the incubator every chance I get to check the temperature and the humidity and then I fight with the hardest part of all – not being able to pick up and “candle” the eggs to see how many are growing and, if they are developing, whether or not they’re still alive.

Candling is the process of shining a bright light into the shell to see the shadow of what’s going on (or rather growing), on the other side of the shell.

Everything I have read on incubating chicken eggs I’ve read says NOT to touch the eggs at all during the first seven days because the chick’s blood vessels are developing and can easily be damaged if moved too much.

I completely understand that, but there’s just something so fascinating with watching a little black “dot” moving around inside of a chicken egg that I crave that sight almost to the point of insanity. The “dot” of course is the chick’s eye and I’ve found that sometimes when candling you can even see the little bird’s heart beating. It’s just cool.

The first time I put eggs into an incubator was about a year ago and I candled each of the 15 eggs every day for the first 7 days. No surprise, none of these eggs developed and I was frustrated. Then, I got wiser with another clutch and started letting the eggs sit untouched in the incubator for the first 3 days and then candled again every day for a total of 7 days. Once again, no shock, none of those eggs developed.

Thinking I was going to a total failure at trying to be a surrogate chicken mama, I tried one more clutch of around 10 eggs. This time, I didn’t touch the eggs at all during the first 7 days and when I went to candle this group—eureka! There were several developing.

I fought the urge with this group of eggs to candle any of them at all, only did it sparingly during the 21 days of incubation, and I was finally successful at having three chicks hatch. Talk about a proud mama!

Old habits die hard and I tried one more time last year with a final clutch in June. I had 6 eggs in that group and out of the 6, only 1 made it to hatch. That was hard to watch one single chick grow up by himself. I put a plush rooster in with the little fellow to try and take the place of siblings, but it just wasn’t the same. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again.

So, it’s the first of the year and the hatching bug has struck again. I have 14 eggs in the incubator and I haven’t touched them for several days as of this writing. I have to occupy myself when I’m at home to not be tempted to just take a tiny “peek” at them to see which ones are developing. By the time this writing is published, I’ll know how many I have and then I’ll have to fight the urge to continue to peek for the remaining 14 days of the incubation period (it usually takes around 21 days). Wish me luck and wish me patience! I’m a horrible count of eggs before they hatch!