If it does spill, your wax is either too hot or the tape wasn't positioned correctly. Wait until the wax left inside the mold hardens and covers the hole that way. Then carefully pour in the rest of the wax.

To be honest, a small ultra-bright torch is all you need, you can use your hand between the egg and torch to make a good seal. We may think that 21 days to hatch is really fast (it is), but the changes happening inside the egg are small and difficult to monitor on a day-to-day basis even though they are continuous. A thin ring around the inside of the egg indicates an early death. The embryo died at the start of incubation, usually within a couple of hours. These eggs are easy to identify and remove, and I have included a photo below. Each egg has its’ own time frame for hatching, and juggling around two or three different types of egg in one incubator is not likely to be a resounding success for you.

As tempting as it may be, try not to candle daily. It can influence growth and development from repeated interruptions.

Exactly how much you can see is limited in most cases. For example, it is doubtful that you will see anything happening inside the egg before Day #4.

To candle properly, you will need your candler and a dark room. The darker, the better. It will help you see the egg contents.

Candling can give you an idea if the egg is progressing or whether there is a problem. As its’ name implies, originally, candling was done with a candle! If you have had problems with bad hatches in the past, candling can sometimes help to see what goes wrong and give you some ideas to try to fix the problem for subsequent hatches as well. I filled the egg candle into an old jam jar with some dry moss. It looks cute but also clean and Scandinavian. I like my decoration to match the rest of my interior decor and not be too overwhelming. Due to the jar it will be protected of wind and can be used outside as well. You could also add some pastel colored pebbles or sand. You could also dye the eggs beforehand to get different colored results. The possibilities are endless! If you'd like your candle to be able to stand on it's own, turn on your stove, place a piece of aluminum foil on it and melt the bottom.

What Is Egg Candling, And Why Do It?

The secret to your success will be keeping good notes on every egg. You should note the temperature and humidity of the incubator, day #, air cell size in your notebook. Some folks note the ambient temperature and humidity too. No, really, you don’t, but if you can, it takes some of the guesswork out of hatching and can help you to improve the chances of subsequent hatches. We hope you enjoyed learning about candling, and perhaps you learned something too! Let us know in the comments section below…

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, you can make your own candler using an LED flashlight and a piece of cardboard.After a week of incubation, place your egg onto your egg candler in a darkened room and turn on the light. You should be able to see shadows from inside the egg. With practice, you will identify fertile eggs by the dark dot, the embryo and the spider-like blood veins spreading out around the egg. Egg candlers can be mains powered or battery operated. They tend to come in two varieties: The first is like a torch with a rubber seal around the end, and the second is a table-top unit with a place to sit the egg. Most candlers today use light-emitting diodes (LED’s) rather than electric bulbs. The advantage of LED is that it produces a bright white light without much heat. Day 7 – should show an increase in the size of the vein web. You should also see the start of the air cell at the blunt end of the egg. Try to candle all the eggs on Day 7.