From MARCIEROSE@aol.comMon Sep 18 01:00:30 1995 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 12:46:46 -0400 From: MARCIEROSE@aol.com To: JPOPENOE@aol.com, sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Re: chicken candling query. Dear JPOPNOE, I often see posts like yours on various boards. I'm glad their are "chicken novices" out there (better than being a "novice chicken," heh? ;-) I have to ask, are you aware of Cooperative Extension and the resources available to you? Have you called your local Cooperative Extension office? Your tax dollars at both the county and federal level support these information dissemination efforts. A good basic book on all poultry is Raising Poultry the Modern Way by Leonard S. Mercia, a former Vermont Extension agent. It is published by Garden Way, a division of Storey Communications, Inc. It's probably available from the feed store where you bought your chicks/feed; any book store could order it for you. It has a section on making a candling light for home use. Candling is use to see if an egg has been fertilized or has a blood spot in it. Good luck! We need more new aggies on any scale. Remember there are no dumb questions. Marcie PS to Sanetters RE: where does food come from - another consequence of our urbanization is the lack of awareness by the general public of the Cooperative Extension Service. I know "trolling for clients" is not what everyone wants to do in an era of declining budgets. However (pardon the pun) this is a classic chicken-and-the-egg argument. Maybe it's time for Extension to reach out to potential farmers. Those folks already in agriculture are usually aware of Extension but the 3rd generation of (sub)urbanites are not. As these people show an increasing interest in small town America, they will need sources of education. From sals@coyote.rain.orgMon Sep 18 01:01:05 1995 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 95 08:24:02 PDT From: sal To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu, JPOPENOE@aol.com Subject: RE: chicken candling query. On Sat, 16 Sep 1995 22:34:09 -0400 JPOPENOE@aol.com wrote: >I was recently asked about candling eggs. What can be told by candling? >condition of egg? whether it is fertilized? Also, I have been told chickens >produce one egg every 26 hours. But it must vary. What is a high rate of >production? A low? If anyone can enlighen us chicken novices it would be >much appreciated. Thank you. > You can candle eggs and watch the progress. You see right off what is living and then can watch the baby chick grow. YOu can keep an eye on the air pocket. That will tell you a lot about if you temperature and humidity is right. you can tell about when they are to hatch and move them to the hatching area. No one know how many eggs are in a chicken or how big the clutch will be. Many things can happen. Someting can scare the hen and will throw her off. I use to love candling. You get to watch the chick from a blood spot to live baby. I always make the date I put the egg in right on the egg that way I have something to watch when I turn the eggs. If you have the temp. and hum. right you can hatch a lot of healthy chicks if not you will see it in the candling and can correct.. Chickens are so easy to hatch and raise and from just a few chickens you can soon have a big flock. Thats way I could not every understand way ther are people starving. its not nature. From! a few chickens you can soon have 1000's. You can have chickens and eggs forever. The incubators of today make it so easy to hatch eggs. The chickens will lay again when you take the eggs away. If you are lucky enough to get a hen that will set let her. I feel those are always the strongest and healthiest chicks. Mom know how to take care of her eggs the best. Still if you want lots of chicks fast incubate. I would always candle the eggs about 4 or 5 times before they hatch watch the temp. hum every day when adding water. Good luck ------------------------------------- Name: Sal Schettino E-mail: sals@rain.org homepage of an organic farmer http://www.rain.org/~sals/my.html Date: 09/17/95 Time: 08:41:09 ------------------------------------- From sals@mail.rain.orgMon Sep 18 22:27:50 1995 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 95 07:58:11 PDT From: sal To: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." , sustag-public@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: RE: chicken candling query. On Mon, 18 Sep 1995 00:55:02 -0400 (EDT) Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote: >On Sun, 17 Sep 1995, sal wrote: > >> You can candle eggs and watch the progress. You see right off what is >living and then can watch the baby chick grow. YOu can keep an eye on >the air pocket. That will tell you a lot about if you temperature and >>humidity is right. you can tell about when they are to hatch and move > >Why do you look at the air pocket? What do you look for & what does it mean? > > Maybe I should explain how this works (watching the air cell) . It has to do with weight. .Eggs loose water from when first laid to hatch. the water loss is caused by temp. and humidity. While incubating the rate of evaporation is controlled. If the temp. is set then you have to make adjustments by adding water(humidity). The size of the air cell is a good guide to correct levels of humidity, but weighting the eggs is better. An egg must lose at least 11% of its initial weight in order to hatch. 13% is usually ideal some say 16%. The loss is not all at once but follows a curve slowly at first then fast at the end. you can see this loss in the air cell by candling. Frist it forms a little air cell and it grows as the egg loses weight. and the chick developed. you can tell the number of days of inubation by looking at the air cell. Also you can tell the age of the chick by looking at the growth of th embryo by candeling. after 2 days you see the blood spot about day 3 the yoke sac blood vessels developed by day 5 you see growth of embryo. By day 12 you see the increasing size of the air cell. Near the end from day 16 on, it is fully blacked out with air cell really showing. Its better to lower the hum. near the end to help the chick get out of the shell.