Jeff has actually asked me to write a post on this topic, as it’s come up in the shop a number of times and this way I can put all my photos together in one place. There are a number of questions and hints that many customers have about candling eggs. There’s a lot of theories and ideas out there that can be confusing if you haven’t candled eggs before. I know my first attempt gave Jeff a good laugh and I saw absolutely nothing. A quick look at Google will give you dozens of ‘perfect’ photographs with veins and all sorts of details that are rather rare to actually see without the perfect egg, extreme high powered candler and darken room.
So why didn’t I see a thing first time around… well I did what I thought you would do and put the fat end of the egg on the candler nice and straight and the whole thing looked like a normal egg does when you plop it on a candler. And this almost totally hid the air sac – which is what you are suppose to be looking for 🙂 So the ‘secret to success’ ??? Tilt the egg slightly on the candler, just abit so you aren’t hiding the air sac .
This egg has been in the incubator for 8 days and in a normal room with normal light, with the expert holding the egg (thanks Jeff – I can’t photograph and do a 2 handed job!) this is what I saw. As you can see below the slight change in angle makes a huge difference to what you can see!
And then 8 days later in darker environment – and just look at the increase in size of the air sac!
So hopefully this will assist you in the candling process. There is alot of information on the web and many many photos and so many of them look very different to what you actually see. You aren’t ‘doing it wrong’ if you don’t see veins and a heartbeat.
Enjoy the chickens, Helen