Candling is fun!

So here we are, twelve days into the egg experiment and all is going fairly well. Candling is very cool - in all the chickens we had, and eggs we incubated when I was a kid, we never candled any of them. Of course, my method is fairly primitive - I'm using Mike's old dive light as it's about the right size. So while I can see what's happening it's not super bright. If we do this again, I'll have to make myself a better setup.

As far as I can tell we have 2 good eggs, and one maybe. I'm pretty sure that one Maran and one Dominique are progressing as planned, the other Dominique egg looks like it may have stopped maturing around day 6 (according to a handy photo guide I found online) which means that now it's just a warm rotten egg - yum!

Hmmm. A friend at work is thinking about surprising her kids with chicks/pullets on Easter. Her son Will is really excited to have chickens - they even came over a few weeks ago (did I mention that before?) to see my set-up. If she decides to, I may see if Denise is okay with me keeping her chicks (from the eggs) for a couple weeks so that I can tuck three feed store chicks for Darrin in with Phyllis as well. I think if I put them in at night after the eggs hatch that she'd accept them without question. Then at 3 weeks I can deliver Denise's chicks to her (sans Phyllis) and Phyl can keep Darrin's chicks growing until Easter (they'd be 4 weeks old then).

Fun! Here's some photos - Phyl's setup in the shed in Jake's old crate, and her in her cardboard box nest.