The Wrong Sort of Blob?

It was only just over a month ago that I lived a relatively fast-paced and semi-sophisticated lifestyle in London. But since I've escaped to Cornwall a strange transformation has occurred: I've become obsessed with incubating eggs. So much so that I'm now known at Newhouse Farm as the Egg Anorak. This is a source of particular amusement around the lunch table, as any mention of "eggs" or "incubating" will have me spouting forth eggy facts to anyone who'll listen. What on earth has happened to me?!

The reason for my geeky behaviour, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, is that I've been given the grand responsibility of incubating some goose, duck and chicken eggs to boost the feathered flocks here at the farm. Today my egg mania went into overdrive, as it was time to candle the incubating eggs to check on their progress. Candling (or lamping) means that the eggs are taken out of the incubator one by one, and held up to a special light. This light illuminates the inside of the egg, allowing you to see the progress of the developing embryo, and remove any infertile or deceased ones. So far the eggs had been incubating for 12 days, so all being well there should definitely be signs of embryonic life inside. How eggciting!! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Adding to my anticipation at the prospect of candling, was a little pearl of eggy wisdom that Steve told me at lunch the other day. Steve works at Newhouse Farm and is just about the only person here who fully appreciates my egg obsession, as he claims to have hatched hundreds of eggs over the years. I already knew that it's particularly important to candle eggs in order to remove from the incubator any bad ones where the embryo has died. But according to Steve if these bad eggs are left in they'll explode, splattering their putrid insides all over the incubator. This was important information to have found out, as unsurprisingly this horrid mess could lead to the other eggs becoming infected as well as creating a foul smell. It's just a pity that Steve chose to tell me about exploding embryos at the lunch table whilst I was tucking into my carrot and carraway seed soup. Yuck.

So, braced for the possibility of exploding eggs and thrilled with the thought of seeing an eggy embryo, I prepared to candle. As I peered through the window of the incubator, it was hard to imagine that anything could actually be happening inside the shells. After all, they looked exactly the same on the outside as they did when I first put them in there 12 days ago. Would all my daily fretting over temperature and humidity control be fruitless? Now was the time to find out.

Dick had given me a special candling lamp, which is essentially a 60W lightbulb surrounded by plastic casing, with a handle at one end and a round hole at the other. When it's switched on the light shines through the hole, allowing an egg to be placed in front of it to examine what's inside. It was the middle of the day when I began egg candling. According to my research, if the embryo was healthy I was going to see a dark moving blob. I nervously lifted the lid of the incubator, selected one of the chicken eggs, held it in front of the candling lamp and saw... absolutely nothing. I placed the egg in a different position and tried it again. Still nothing. I put it back in the incubator and tried another egg. Nothing once more. It was just too light in the room for the candling lamp to work.

But that wasn't going to stop me. All I needed was to find an additional piece of high-tech candling equipment: a cardboard box. By now Dick and James had appeared, curious about the result of the candling, and soon a cardboard box was procured. Dick quickly cut a round hole for the candling lamp to fit into, and another bit where my hand would fit for me to hold the egg in front of the lamp. We positioned the box in a shady spot on the floor underneath the table that the incubators were sat on. Surely this time, now some artificial darkness had been created, the candling would work?



I grabbed an egg, a duck egg this time, and held it in front of the lamp. Eureka! Now it seemed to work. Inside the cardboard box the inside of the egg was dimly illuminated by the lamp, and I could see a dark blobby mass at the broader end of the egg. We tried another duck egg, and after moving it around a bit I could see another vague dark blob. Now it was time to try the chicken eggs, but because the shells were so dark (usual for Maran eggs), it was really tricky to see much inside apart from a hint of a dark shadow. It seemed it was pointless continuing candling for now, I'd simply have to wait until the evening when it would be dark enough to try again.

However, I was perturbed by the vague shapes I'd seen inside the eggs. What if they were the wrong sort of blob?I spent the next couple of hours consulting the incubating section in the poultry books, and Googling for more information. I was alarmed by an illustration in one of the books that looked similar to the blobs I'd seen, which described what an egg looks like when the embryo had suffered a late death. The more I looked at this picture, the more I became convinced that the blobs I'd seen meant my eggs were dead. Depression kicked in. How could this have happened? I'd been so attentive! Warming up water to spray the eggs with every morning. Checking in on them throughout the day to make sure they were ok. How could this egg death have happened?!

Cut to a few hours later when the night had descended, and Dick, James and myself were gathered in the dark around the incubators once again. This time when I held an egg to the candling lamp, the inside of the shell glowed, and I could see... a dark moving blob! In fact, I could see much more than that. I could see red veins coming out of the blob, the air sack at the broad end of the egg, and most excitingly of all a blobby bit with what looked like a beak that moved a bit! One by one I checked through the eggs, and saw variations of the same dark blob and veins theme. Hopefully this means that so far all the little embryos are ok and developing well. I can sleep soundly for the time being!

Candling eggs was an exciting, nerve-wracking, and altogether weird experience. I found it unbelievable to think that inside of something so simple as a little egg, such an amazing process could be taking place. They may be dark blobs now, but in a couple more weeks little goslings, ducklings and chicks will hopefully be attempting to break free from their shells. Everyone at Newhouse Farm is much more accustomed to being around life and death than I am. It's a commonplace occurrence for them. But for me, used to life in the concrete jungle, I feel dumb-founded by knowing that inside those shells life is forming against all odds. Truly wonderful!

Come back soon for more updates on the progress of the eggs. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed they survive!