Video: Egg Candling Day 8

We candled the chicken eggs again today, and were able to see a LOT more of what is going on inside. On Tuesday, we were able to faintly see the shadow of an embryo in about five of our eighteen eggs. Four of the eggs seemed to have nothing going on inside them, and the rest left us with a big question mark; we just couldn't tell what was going on.

What a difference three days makes! We were able to confirm that six of the eggs were indeed duds...

Nope. No chickens here.

...but the rest? All of them had something like this going on;

Did you catch that little shadow hopping around towards the bottom of the egg?

That's totally a chicken!!!

Now, keep in mind that the expression about not counting one's eggs until they hatch is there for a reason. We've had eggs that have seemed perfectly viable just not hatch, for no reason that we could figure out. We've been very careful to let the Frogs know that sometimes, the chicks just don't come out, even if we really, really want them to. As we said in the last post, a 50% hatch rate is about average for us in a good year, so if we get six chickens we'll be very lucky...

The final dozen.

..That said, twelve is a nice round number, so cross your fingers!