Quote Originally Posted by rabernet View Post
Tim,

Thank you for sharing your two events and what's been going on, it's good that others can learn from these events as well.

I do have a question though - is there a reason that you choose to separate your eggs? Being a newbie this year, I just left the clutch attached as I was too worried about what happened to you happening to me. When I say is there a reason, I mean - is there a benefit to doing so, or is this more of a personal preference?
Robin,
Mostly it is a personal preference. However, this was a five egg clutch, and I am using some new incubation containers for the smaller clutches. Being a smaller clutch, I wanted to seperate it because of " head room" in the smaller boxes. My mistake came in seperating a clutch that could have been laid 24 hours before me finding it. Typically if you find a clutch within 2 to 3 hours of laying, the eggs come apart easily because they haven't "melded" yet (that's my word for it). I do not believe it is mandatory to seperate them at all, even if you are a "cutter", because they seperate very easily around day 50.

Hope that helps,