Excitement, followed by sad findings....

The excitement I have for my lil chicks to be born is overwhelming! As is the excitement I get before I candle my eggs.

To be able to see the developing stages is amazing.

I began with 25 eggs, after a few days I decided to candle them for the first time and found two eggs that seemed to not have been fertile. Which is fine, I knew that not all of them were and that a few of these would not make it to hatching, that is just life. I was thrilled to see that two of the eggs I was positive would not be fertile for lack of seeing my rooster "get" those particular hens, were indeed fertile and developing! One was a white egg from my white Leghorn girl (cleverly named Ivory) and the other was from one of our first hens an Ameraucana (named after her Black Beard)

Unfortunately, after candling a few times I found the big blue egg had died. Sad but again it was OK. I was the most hopeful for my lil white egg because my rooster is a beautiful black Cochin with great feathered legs and I really wanted to see what would turn out from them combined.

Yesterday I was candling and was able to see my white egg baby move for the first time, she wiggled and twitched and fluttered in there as I watched on. At least she seemed to be keeping herself entertained! At this time in the game I had come down to 18 eggs that seemed to have life, although of that I had 4 that were questionable.

Well tonight as I candled them, I did as I always do and looked at my white egg first and here is what I saw.........

If a developing egg is not something you are used to seeing than let me explain.
This is a no longer living baby chick. What you want to see is the upper part of the egg (well in this pick) being pretty dark and only really being able to see a few even darker spots (as the baby) and an amazing spider webbing of veins. Although I can see a few veins, they are thin and no longer pumping also the baby was not moving.

To tell you the truth I should not have let myself get that excited about any of the eggs, it would have been a lot less upsetting. But sadly I am not that type of person.

So I continued to candle my eggs and found that I am down to 9 eggs that have moving, living chicks in them.

This is a blue egg, so it is very hard to see inside.

This is a very light brown egg, as you can see there are veins. At the bottom, the bright yellow area (from the light) is the air sac. The very dark area is the chick and boy was she bouncing around in there.

Not sure why this one loaded sideways, but again good lil growing chick in this one as well!

I will keep my head up as I always try (dose not always work) and I can always try this again. I have my fingers crossed for the rest of these eggs.