Turkey Candling

Chicken egg candled, day four. Source: click image.

Now, I don’t know much about candling eggs, but I thought I’d take a peek at our turkey eggs today (day nine). I’m borrowing a Brinsea OvaScope from my friend Annie (Hi, Miss B.!), which she used in her elementary school classroom this spring for their own hatch of chicken eggs (some of the eggs were from our farm – and four of them hatched!). She had hers hooked up to a webcam for seeing on her laptop, which is awesome, but my only webcam is integrated into my laptop, so I can’t do the same thing. I had to do it the old-fashioned way (stick my eye in the hole).

The result? Out of 13 turkey eggs, 11 have developing embryos, and two are “clears” (all I can see is the shadow of the yolk). Since I’m new at this, I’m leaving all the eggs in, but I marked them with question marks (using pencil). If they are still clear during the next candling in the week or so, I will toss them.

I tried candling the chicken eggs, which have only been incubating for less than two days, but of course I couldn’t see much yet.

The girls enjoyed peeking and seeing the difference between the eggs with embryos and the eggs that were clear. Maya was continually worried that I was leaving the incubator open too long (“They’re going to die!”) but I reassured her that mama hens leave their nests for up to 20-30 minutes a day to eat, poop, take a dust bath, etc. and the eggs are fine with the temporary cool down. Of course, one should take care in handling the eggs gently, and leaving them alone is generally best, but I have only moved them one other time. While I was in there, I filled up one of the humidity channel with warm water. The incubator (a Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco) recovered its temp within two minutes (love that thing!).

Bourbon Red turkey poults. Source: click image.

So, we have up to 11 poults waiting at the end of the journey. Very exciting. I’m praying for them all to hatch!

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