Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Candling the Muscovy eggs

Well, we are now on day 14 of 35 with the Muscovy eggs. After candling them, I determined that 2 of the original 15 were infertile and 2 had died early on, so now we're down to 11. Tonight I candled one and could see a little embryo moving around, but unfortunately could not get a picture to turn out. Maybe next time I candle I'll test out the video function on my camera. I did get a picture on day 10 of a viable egg, this vaguely shows the spiderweb of blood vessels that form early on in development (The faint red lines near the top of the egg).

Day 10

It's interesting that different poultry take different amounts of time to hatch. You would think that ducks are ducks and it would all be the same, but all other ducks only take 28 days to hatch and Muscovy ducks take 25% longer at 35 days. Compared with a quail's 16 days, that's an eternity (also seems like eternity for those of us that watch the incubators.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is totally amazing. your blog about your garden is completely mind blowing. i have never felt so lazy.

-suzanne

ChristyACB said...

Beautiful picture!

It would be nice to actually see where they are at later in development so if you decide to test the video function..well..I'd like it!

Kory said...

waaay cool, cant wait to see the little peepers