It's hatching day and your eggs are over due.
What now?
There is a test for that.
So the first thing that I want to do is I want to differentiate what this test is and
what this test is not.
There is a test out there that is called the edible floating egg test or something like
that.
And what that test does is it determines whether or not your egg is edible.
So if you have some eggs sitting in your refrigerator that are maybe two or three months old and
you want to determine whether or not they are still edible.
You get yourself a bowl of water.
You put your egg in the water and if it sinks it's edible.
If it floats, it's not.
That is not what this test is.
This test are for eggs that are fertile and we have a hen that has been sitting on these
eggs for twenty three days now and they have not hatched.
What I want to do is determine whether or not these eggs are still viable eggs.
Is there a possibility a chick is still going to hatch out of these?
If your thinking, well it takes twenty one days for a chicken egg to hatch and we are
at day twenty three, obviously they are not viable.
Actually twenty one days is something that the egg industry came up with because if stick
eggs in an incubator and you have a constant temperature with a constant humidity level.
Then twenty one days under ideal circumstances is how long it takes for a chicken egg to
hatch.
However, when you have eggs that a hen is taking care of you don't always have ideal
conditions all the time.
Because that hen is going to be up off of her nest.
Getting food, getting water and the temperature on those eggs are going to be up and down.
So it may actually, it's actually not uncommon for chicken eggs that are raised by hens to
take longer than twenty one days to hatch.
The longest I have seen it for a chicken egg to hatch and the chicken inside to actually
survive is twenty five days.
So we are at twenty three days now.
If the eggs have no chance of hatching over the next two days then I don't want to continue
wasting the hens time sitting on eggs that will never hatch.
So that is what this test will determine for me.
It will determine whether or not these eggs are viable.
It will not tell me whether or not a chicken will hatch or that a chicken will not hatch
out.
It will just tell me is that egg dead or is it still viable and do I still have chance.
So the first thing that you want to do is you want to get yourself a bowl and water
and the water needs to be deep enough so that the egg can sink or swim so too speak.
The water temperature needs to be between one hundred and one hundred and five degree.
You don't want cold water, you don't want hot water your not trying to boil the egg
or anything like that.
You want it at the same temperature that an incubator would keep it or close to it.
Then you want to take your egg and the first thing you want to do before you stick it in
the water is you want to inspect the outer shell.
It can not be compromised in any way.
If there is a crack in it.
If there is a chip in it, especially around where the air pocket would be.
You do not want to submerge that egg in water.
If the egg shell is compromised in any way and you submerge it in water.
Water could get inside that shell.
If there is a live chicken in there.
It will drown that chick.
Also, I think this might go without saying but it really doesn't pay dividend to do this
test before twenty one days.
If you wanna do it at day twenty one or day twenty two.
That is fine.
Just to see which eggs might be viable and which ones are definitely not.
But if your doing it before twenty one days.
It is best to just let those eggs run there course and then check.
The next thing you want to do is, maybe you don't have to put it in water.
You can just tap on the egg shell.
and then listen.
What your listening for is any sounds.
you want to feel for movement inside the egg.
Now this egg I already know is not viable.
This is a dead egg.
Ah, you don't want to do this by any means.
You don't want to take the egg and shake it around but just from moving it from the nest
box over to here.
I felt something move in there and for an egg that is twenty three days old, that isn't
right.
So I know right off the bat without sticking this in the water, this is probably a dead
egg.
When i stick it in the water.
It is probably going to float on me.
So I have already tapped all of the eggs and I have listened and two of them seem ok.
One of them as I said earlier seems like it has problems so I'm going to stick that one
in first and what we are looking for is, if the egg floats like a bobber without weights.
It's a dead egg. and the reason for that is because the membranes inside have ruptured
and the egg has dehydrated.
That makes a very buoyant egg.
Ok, so what we are looking for here is where actually looking for the egg to sit about
eighty five percent below the water line.
And about fifteen to twenty percent above the water line and this one here is riding
just a little bit to high in the water.
So this egg here I'm not going to put back in the nest box with the hen.
Because I'm pretty certain that that one is not viable anymore.
I'm going to just set that aside.
Now the second one.
Alright now this is actually a little bit closer to what we are going to be looking
for.
What we see here is an egg that sets primarily below the water line, but doesn't sink.
So this egg is looking pretty good.
It's giving me exactly what it is that I want to see here.
So I will take this and I will stick it back in the nest box with mother hen.
I will probably allow her to sit on these eggs for another forty eight hours or so.
Give her out to about the end of day twenty five.
And see what happens.
If nothing happens at that point what I will probably do is there is a technique that you
can use to assist a chick in helping her get out of her shell.
But it is very time consuming.
Very labor intensive and it has a very low success rate so, if there is a live chick
in there but she is just too weak to get out.
Hopefully I might be able to help her out.
But chances are by day twenty five the odds are going to be against her.
So this is the third and final egg that we have here.
That egg is looking pretty good too.
It is primarily below the water line as I said earlier and about fifteen to twenty percent
of it is still above the water.
So this egg as well I will stick back in with mother hen for another forty eight hours and
we will see what we get.
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