Day 8 - Candling the Babies

We had a very scientific time today candling the babies. I'm happy to report that we saw some kind of something in all the eggs. We kept a table of all the eggs starting with the number, the description of the actual shell, and then what we observed inside. Here's a few examples (they do not necessarily correspond to the pictures up top):

J8 / Light Brown Egg / Division in horizontal S shape / eyespot / veins

J11 / Small green egg / Division / Very Full

J26 / White egg / Speckled Interior / Red veins / Division

5V / Brown egg / Division / Eyespot

"Division" is Suzanne-speak for seeing a definite dark mass at the top of the egg and a definite clearness at the bottom of the egg with a clear delineation between the two. Most of these divisions were not in a straight line, but rather were curved. Some were VERY curved resulting in the description of a "horizontal S shape." The green egg above sort of has that going on. An eyespot is a very distinctive small dark spot in the center of a darker mass. You can see one of these above. Veins are really important at this stage. You can sort of see some veins in one of the pictures above. Speckled interior is not necessarily a good thing.

You can see it in the picture down here. I think (from my careful Internet research) that that means the shell may be weak.


I'm so glad that we saw veins, spots, and dark masses! Of our 41 eggs, 8 of them had all of the following: veins, dark masses, and dark spots. I have marked them as "good." They are as follows: 5V, 7V, 11V, J1, J3, J7, J8, and J15.

We candle again in a week! I will let you all know what happens!