People often wonder if an egg is fertile or not. The only way to tell without cracking it open is to begin incubating the egg and check for veining by candling in the first week. You can tell if an egg is fertile by cracking it into a bowl and looking for a small white dot on the yolk, called the blastoderm. In a non-fertile egg this white dot is small and solid.
Embryonic development can begin while the egg is being formed inside the chicken in the first 24 to 48 hours. When a fertile egg is cracked, the blastoderm looks like a donut or bulls eye with a white ring around it.
If you buy fertile hatching eggs from me, please use the incubation and candling method to determine fertility! Happy hatching.