Saturday, April 14, 2012

Candling of Guinea Eggs

Last night I candled all my incubating guinea eggs!
Here are some photos from the guinea eggs candling.  It was very hard to know what I was seeing.  After looking at all the eggs, I'm not sure any of them are alive.  It looks like I'm a week off with my times, if they are even alive, they are a week behind my schedule.  About half of them appeared to be clear, and about half had some dark mass if I turned the egg a certain way.  None of them really looked like I expected, as if a baby is going to hatch in 10 days.



I made a guinea egg candling box by cutting a quarter-sized hole in a tissue box and putting a flashlight on the inside.  Just put an egg on the box and turn out the light.  I did it at nighttime so the room was dark without the light.



I really don't think I have any good guinea eggs and am discouraged.  Last year I put guinea eggs underneath broody chicken hens and didn't mess with them and they hatched.  This year I am using the incubator, as I have no broody hens.  Maybe something is wrong with my incubator.  Maybe my guineas aren't having sex.  I don't know...

Time will tell.  I'm not going to hold my breath for keets.  I'll let you know as they get closer to the estimated due date week of 24 Apr12 through 28Apr12.

8 comments:

Jenny wren's nest said...

Thats a good one the Guineas not breeding, it goes to prove you can't do better than nature.

Chai Chai said...

Don't give up, they may surprise you yet!

CaliforniaGrammy said...

So sorry to here there may not be any fertile eggs . . . I won't give up until your next report confirming such. Bummer!

LindaG said...

I don't know what they are supposed to look like.
If you think they are a week behind, then I say keep them in the incubator as much as a week longer.
I'm sorry if they might not be fertile. I don't know what the odds are of guineas not having sex.
*hugs* Good luck. ♥

Country Girl said...

It looks like something in the egg pictures you showed. Don't you think so? I bet you get a couple. But don't take them out for a little longer than you calculated like one of your friends said. I hope you are pleasantly surprised! You mother hen, you! Ha Ha!

The Chicken Keepers said...

We have eggs in the incubator too and we tried candling and saw the same things as you did! We would really like to know too, if the eggs are duds or not!

Dog Trot Farm said...

I guess only time will tell, keeping my fingers crossed. Keep us posted, Julie.

Anonymous said...

I only have 5 guineas now and they're all girls. We started with 30 and a bunch of them died due to a disease they brought with them from the hatchery. (As soon as we could get some medicated feed, they stopped dying.)

Then a bunch of them were killed by dogs. A hawk or eagle got at least one and a fox snagged another. We had 6 for the longest time, but lost one just two weeks ago.

Candling. Yes. I just posted about my one week check-up of my chicken eggs on my blog. I also describe my process.

My guinea girls just started laying. Well... let's say I just started getting eggs from them. They free range most of most days - and the two eggs I have found were on days that they were inside all day. So I suspect there are a lot of "wild" eggs out there somewhere. ;-D

I candled both of the eggs I have, and there is just a faint shadow in them on one end, the rest of the egg being pretty much lit up. My eggs do NOT look like yours. Assuming your eggs were all collected on the same day, I'd suggest the "clear" eggs are non-fertile. The two dark shadowed eggs you pictured look like they MIGHT have embryos in them. If you turn them on their sides, you'll get a better picture of what's in the shell.