A lot of people don't quite know what a fertile egg looks like, so I thought I'd take a picture while I remembered to. I like to use a mag light, torch light or pen light to candle the eggs. It's always been the easiest for me to use.

The egg that you can see veins in is a week old, which is about the time when you can actually start 'candling' eggs to see if they're fertile or not. Somewhere between days 6 and 8 is probably the best time to check.

  
  
The pen light I use to check the eggs with:

  
I use the pen light so that I don't have to handle the eggs at all. You can buy these at fishing tackle shops, d.i.y. stores, ebay, pound shops etc.

It is also possible to check the eggs with the naked eye after a lot of practice. It's not always easy to get the camera to show the different shades of the eggs. The whiter, more glossy looking eggs in this picture are the fertile ones:

  
Again, the whiter ones are the fertile ones, you can see the others have more of a pink tint to them?

  
When an egg goes bad, or 'addled' it turns a dirty grey colour like the middle one on the left:

  
4 of these 7 eggs are fertile, in this picture the other 3 haven't gotten to that stage yet. Can you guess which are the fertile ones?

  


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Anna-Marie Stewart keeps and breeds pet budgerigars.
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