The Call Again Farm Journal

I candled the older bunch of turkey eggs today, and what a contrast it was from the candling I did five days ago.  It was so easy.  All but four of the twenty-three eggs were clearly developing well.  I saw the embryos in most of the developing eggs moving.  The first time I saw an embryo moving while I was candling two years ago I utterly overwhelmed by the miracle of life.  All these cycles of incubation and candling since I've seen many more moving embryos, but it still never ceases to bring a smile to my face.  I'm not sure exactly what part of the embryo moves, but it's something knobby sticking out from the main lump of the embryo.  I imagine it's a leg and foot kicking, just like a human embryo.

I also put the chicken eggs in the incubator today.  These eggs are the ones laid soon before and after the rooster's death, so they should be fertilized.  Unfortunately, though, I'd promised to sell all the chicks in this batch to a woman I'd met last fall, so I won't get to hatch any chicken eggs for Call Again Farm uses.  I'm not sure how well this clutch of eggs is going to do anyways, though, because we borrowed this incubator from a friend.  It isn't an incubator I would have bought because it's a still-air incubator, the cheapest, most basic kind of incubator out there.  The heating within a still-air incubator is uneven, so some eggs do better than others.  All of the incubators I own are moving-air models, but I needed these for my chicken eggs.  Well, as Bob said, the price for the still-air incubator is right.