Incubation Update (Day 12 of 54)

Because of the thickness of the egg shells and the dark color, emu eggs cannot be candled without sophisticated equipment. I don’t have such equipment so I weigh the eggs. An incubating egg should lose 12 – 15% of it’s starting weight by the time it hatches. If you weigh the eggs and record the rate of weight loss, you can tell if an embryo is developing and you can also know if you need to adjust the humidity in the incubator.

I am happy to report that all three emu eggs appear to have developing chicks as all have lost to appropriate amount of weight for this stage of incubation. They are incubating in the Brinsea Octagon Advanced with an automatic humidity pump. The pump is driving me crazy because it is sitting on my desk. Every time the humidity in the incubator goes down it pumps small amounts of water in to raise it back up. It is sort of noisy. That is all I have to report at this time. I will post again after the next weigh in.

Egg         Starting Weight            Current Weight                Amount Lost                   Percentage

A            618.02 grams               609.51 grams                  8.51 grams                     0.15%

B            532.97  grams              521.63 grams                  11.31 grams                   0.62%

C            669.05 grams               654.87 grams                  14.1 grams                     0.61%