CHICKEN EXPERTS R US-------NOT

Candling is so EASY a baby can do it!


My poor little bantam hen is so small and tiny and working on hatching 5 Rhode Island Red eggs. Bless her little heart she is stretching and covering these huge eggs and enjoying every minute of it. This hen has no choice but to be very forgiving if she is going to be a JOYHOUSE hen.

She starts off laying an egg a day and sitting on them and complaining when I reach under her and grab the egg. Then she spends all of her energy trying to hatch two wooden eggs... and she even lays an egg of her own, and accidentally pokes a hole in it.

Being the know-it-all that I am, I brought the broken egg into the house and opened up the shell. The egg looked like an egg. There was no little white thing or spot of blood or anything. Just a clean looking little egg.

So I continued to gather any eggs that she lays while calling her crazy for working so hard on the pinochio twins.

Come to find out....fertilized eggs look exactly the same as unfertilized eggs and I just swiped all of her wanna be children and fried them up in a pan. Poor mama..

After realizing what I had done, I replace the two wooden eggs with 5 Rhode Island Red fertilized eggs. She is working very hard on keeping them all covered and it seems such a struggle to stretch her little body and keep these eggs warm.. My favorite brother in law in the world James suggests that I candle the eggs. He shows me on the internet this great idea that was invented way back when. They used to hold an egg up to a candle while in a dark room to see if there was a chick growing or not. The purpose of this is to eliminate a stinky rotten egg or a gassy egg exploding or in my case....the stress of working on 5 eggs when one or two might be blanks.

What a great idea! So I read up on it and discover that you can use a flashlight or a strong lightbulb and almost anything to funnel the light..... OMG I am so excited... I set up a dark room and move in a strong lamp and I get a paper towel tube to funnel the light. I grabbed my camera and set it in the room with the lens cap off ready to go so I can document the big event. I am so proud of myself. I get a plastic bowl and fill it with paper towels to cushion the eggs. I get only three at a time so I do not freak out Juliet the banny hen. I am so nervous carrying these eggs up the steps and to the house... I just know that I am going to trip over my own two feet and drop them all.

I somehow make it to the bathroom. I remember what I have read about shining the light on the round part of the egg. I carefully grab an egg and set it on the end of the paper towel tube. I don't know why but I expected the egg to set on the end while I took the picture. The egg slid through the tube and hit the lightbulb and splattered on the countertop. OMG I was horrified! The chick was there, the egg is fertilized and the shell was cracked and this little creature was doomed, and there is my camera ready to go, so I took the picture. I put the two remaining un-candled eggs back under mama and she gave me a very dirty look.

Now she has 4.