Candling Our Eggs

Monday was Day 14 for our incubating eggs. The teachers have been candling them since about Day 7 to monitor the embryo development and we thought you might like to read a short blog post about it - complete with videos of one of our developing embryos!

Here is a chart that shows eggs at various stages of development being candled (although it's called candling, it's really done with a flashlight made just for this purpose).

These eggs are being illuminated from the top. The part that remains clear yellow or also white throughout all of the stages is the part of the egg called the air sac. You can see that on Day 3, there really isn't much to look at, but by Day 6 there are visible blood vessels and the embryo is that little "bean" shaped shadow at the top of the egg. On Day 8 you can see that the embryo is moving down and on Days 10 and 15 you can see how it's developing and filling up the egg. On Day 19 the egg is so full that all you can see is the air sac. In a couple more days the chick will hatch!

Some eggs are easier to see through than others, and we are very lucky this year to have some that are giving us an awesome show! Below are two videos we took today (Monday 4/22) of one such egg. In the first video, Teacher Sheri is turning the egg (our flashlight is shining up from the bottom instead of from the top like in the diagram). You can definitely see the blood vessels and the embryo and it gives a great view of the air sac.

In this next video, you can see the chick moving around. SO COOL! 

We would love to be able to let all of the kids see the eggs get candled, but it's just not terribly practical. Hopefully this is the next best thing! Our sweet little chicks should begin hatching at the beginning of next week!