Candling is the use of a bright light to shine through an egg to check fertility and embryology development. This candling video shows three kinds of eggs: "winners" (fertilized eggs with developing embryos), "quitters" (fertilized, but embryo stopped growing) and "yolkers" (unfertilized eggs). In the winners, you can see a healthy network of blood vessels and sometimes the eye spot. At day 7, chicken embryos are about the size of a dime. If you leave yolkers or quitters in your incubator, they will rot and get smelly, so we remove them from the incubator.

Visit 4H EGG Cam at lancaster.unl.edu/eggcam.

Locally, the 4H youth development program is a partnership between Nebraska Extension and Lancaster County government. Learn more about the Lancaster County 4H program at lancaster.unl.edu/4h.