The other week we had a candling session with some of our staff. Candling is when you take the egg, shine a light underneath it in the dark and are able to see a shadows from inside the egg.
If you were to candle an egg from the supermarket you would see
NOTHING!
However, if you were to candle a fertile egg you would see
Something!?
That picture there is of a fertile egg.
In the video below you can see some blood vessels and the embryo moving
I tried to get images and video of our own eggs but, it didn’t come out really well. All of these images are from Backyard Chicken Forum which is an eggcellent source of information all things chicken!
When we candled our own eggs a different time we were able to see the embryos moving and we all became very eggcited (sorry its too tempting not to use the word egg). When we first candled them on day 8 we could tell that some were not even fertilized and some had developed. Candling another time proved that some of those fertile eggs had stopped developing which is not uncommon when incubating eggs.
We just wont know the whole truth until hatching day which is just around the corner.
I am still working on a blog about the chicks parents so look for that too.
Elephants: After carrying a baby for 22 months, she delivers 250 lbs of cuteness.
Octopus- Talk about self sacrifice,this mom (depending on its species) can lay up to 200,000 eggs. As if that’s not enough work she may decide to eat her own arms because she will not leave the area to look for food. The kicker is after all that she dies when the eggs start to hatch.
:)
Hi Kimberly!
It was great meeting you yesterday at the Wolf Overlook and finding out all those cool things about the Red Wolf Rehab program. I’m definitely going to follow this blog more often.
As a side note, I was reading your post about homemade dog treats and was a little alarmed that GARLIC is included. I’ve worked as a certified vet tech for many years and have seen garlic poisonings in dogs a few times, which wasn’t pretty. So I ask that you educate yourself about this possibility when garlic is used in recipes and I’d recommend not giving garlic and onion. Please read the link I provided from the ASPCA.
Again, thanks for all the great info yesterday and keep up the awesome work with the carnivores!
ASPCA website on garlic toxicity in dogs:
http://www.aspca.org/Pet-care/ask-the-expert/ask-the-expert-poison-control/treats-with-garlic.aspx
Laura
It was great to meet you as well. The receipe only called for 1 tsp, for over 80 treats, a very small amount. But thank you for the information and I look forward to talking to you again soon.