What's wrong with these eggs?

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Originally Posted by ClarkT

There is absolutely no water touching the eggs.

The veins in the discolored eggs are as you suggest, not well defined, and blurry... :(

I hope it's just my bad luck (nothing seems to be going right for me lately...) and not something I did wrong.

We had the eggs in the tub within 3-5 hours of her laying them, so I don't think, based on replies, that it's the rotating egg thing.

We have absolutely no water in contact with them, so I don't think it's that. Condensate is not forming on them, either.

We didn't use sterile gloves to handle the eggs...I haven't read anywhere that it would be necessary. Is it a possible contaminated environment/touched eggs with dirty hands/dirty tub/bad air/etc?

We have our next clutch due to be laid in 8-12 days. I don't want to have been the cause of eggs going bad, and possibly causing it again. I sure feel incompetent at this point.

How much swing in temp is allowable in the incubator without causing problems? It seems nobody has a real answer for this...I know we want it to be as little as possible, but is a 6 degree swing still tolerable/ok?

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My opinion of your eggs, is very similar to most. I believe the eggs that are going bad were destined to do so. My thinking also says that if any eggs are doing good this far into incubation, then obviously you are doing it right, or the other two would be dying as well.

As far as rotating eggs goes, as Ed stated, I did an experiment with this a couple years ago. I rotated an egg after it had been incubating for 7 days, and another egg after incubating for 14 days. I rotated them 180 degrees, and both hatched just fine. I personally do not feel that moving the eggs is that de3trimental, although I don't advise it if it can be avoided.

I don't think sterile gloves are necessary, nor do I believe that a perfectly clean environment is necessary. I am not saying be filthy, but we take no special precautions for egg care.

As far as temp swings go, as you seem to know, and most have supported this, temp swings should be avoided. However, they are inevitable, and we all experience them for some reason or other. I believe that 3 degrees in your normal incubating is probably fine, although I would consider that the limit of what I would want to see in normal circumstances. We have experienced as much as 8 degrees due to power loss. My opinion on a large swing, would be to bring the eggs back to the desired range as slowly as possible. The largest concern for me is rapid changes in temperature. Rapid changes provide for optimal conditions for condensation formation, and that is what really kills the eggs. So, if you have a large swing, bring tham back to temp slowly. I am implying here that you had a loss of power and lost temperature, and are slowly bringing it back up. If you have a large swing in temperature in the upward direction, I belive that if you get up over about 95 degrees for any length of time, the eggs will cook, and you can't recover from that.

I hopefully will be doing a right up soon for my website that covers egg health and egg care. I will post it up here when I get it done (I know I have been moving a bit slow lately on write ups, but we just finished our all inclusive care sheet, and I am working on the egg care sheet as soon as I get the BP Care Sheet page formatted).

I hope some of that can help,

Thank you Tim! You sure give me more confidence. I guess we'll see in a few weeks, hopefully!