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Day 14 of Incubating Serama Chicken Eggs

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I apologize to anyone that I did not update, at least, on day 7 as well. I had meant to do so, but life gets away from me quite often. On day 7 I candled all the eggs for the first, official, time. At that time it was obvious there were a few that had not been fertilized. One egg seemed to be a touch behind the others as its eye was not as big as the other embryos, but sometimes they can be late. As day 7 is still a bit early, I left all eggs in the incubator and just marked the air sacs of all but the ones I could tell weren't fertilized. There were, however, two eggs that I had trouble seeing air sacs in but I could see an embryo so I left those, hoping it was just that the shell thickness and color made it difficult to see. Day 10 was the next candle day. This is the first day many will remove non-viable eggs. I removed the four that had not been fertilized. One of them was a white-shelled egg, but when put over the light gave off a greenish-blue color. I could see the yolk,...
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Day 1 of Incubation and Technical Side of Incubating

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So, as I said the the previous post I got these eggs yesterday (May 20, 2018). The breeder I got them from says the batches she sells were all collected within the last four days before pick-up/shipping. It's a very odd thing how chicken eggs can sit like that and not really start having an embryo form and grow unless conditions are right. I read on a forum I go to,  www.backyardchickens.com , that someone stores their eggs in a wine cooler. They claim that that keeps them at the perfect temperature to put the embryo on hold in the time it takes to collect enough eggs to make it worth incubating. I've seen others keep their eggs in the fridge. Apparently there are plenty of people who end up incubating and hatching eggs they got from Trader Joe's! Now, had I been able to pick out the eggs myself I would have picked only the cleanest.  Not that you can't get a good hatch from some dirty eggs (dirty meaning has chicken poop on it), but the success rate is much higher du...
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Intro and Day 1 of Incubation!

Changing things up on this blog, going to keep the name of the blog because I like it, even if it was meant to be for my Ideal Protein diet. Anyway...My name is Sarah, I am a 30-year-old single mom currently living in North Carolina. I spent my childhood here then spent from Dec. 1999 to Sept. 2015 in Alaska. My son is six and is currently in kindergarten. Not much else to know about me except I'm a huge nerd. Well, I bet you're wondering what incubation I am talking about in my title for this post. I'm talking about chicken egg incubation. Serama chicken eggs to be exact. I just got them yesterday from someone who breeds and sells them in New Bern, NC. She sells them by the dozen and usually includes four extra just in case as normally she ships them, but she gave me eight extra so I have 22 eggs currently in the incubator! This is my first time incubating eggs. I've never even had chickens, personally. My oldest sister (who lives right next door) has nine. It was ...
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