Adventures in Candling

Wade and I (and Noah) FINALLY took some decent candling pictures today. I guess the secret to taking these kind of photos is to be in a somewhat lighted room... up until now, we've been trying to do this in a very dark room. Lesson learned.

The first two photos are of an egg we now believe is infertile. Although it doesn't candle clear (like an egg from the fridge would), the dark mass that is seen is likely nothing more than a yolk.

So... how does one "candle" an egg? We use the mag-lite method in addition to constructing our own  candling box. While the mag-lite gives us a much clearer picture of the egg's interior, the light is quite hot. Due to this, we only get a quick look this way.

This egg appears to be a "yolker" (an incubated egg without a growing embryo inside)

 For extended views, we made our own candling box. We took a shoe box, cut a quarter sized hole in the top and encircled that hole with thick black fabric. We put a small LED lantern in the box (but there are other ways of providing a light source), closed the box and placed the egg over the hole.

Same infertile egg, this time on our candling box

 Here are photos of our two obviously fertile eggs. The chicks are growing quickly and almost fill the entire egg!

11 days using a maglite, then candle box. Note the air cell in the photo on the left