Guinea Fowl Egg Candling

Guinea fowl egg shells are notoriously thick and tough. Guinea fowl egg shells are much thicker and tougher than store-bought chicken egg shells. So keep this in mind when you are candling guinea fowl eggs during incubation. You’ll need a relatively bright light source to adequately penetrate a Guinea fowl egg shell and see what’s inside.

You can buy some very nice egg candling equipment from poultry supply companies. The cost of egg candling equipment runs a pretty wide span, and some of the egg candling equipment you see online is clearly for commercial use. But most of the units are pretty small, relatively inexpensive and easy to use.

You can also use a flashlight to do your egg candling, and with superb results. Egg candling is really a pretty simple operation. You must shine a bright light through the egg shell in such a way that it does not interfere with your ability to see what’s inside the egg. In other words, you should have a light source that is small in diameter so the light doesn’t affect your eyes and blind you to what’s inside the egg shell.

The photographs below were taken using a small, bright flashlight with a piece of cardboard laying over the lens where the light comes out. We cut a circle, about ¾” in diameter, in the cardboard and centered the hole over the light or lens. We then put a couple of pieces of tape on the cardboard to hold it to the flashlight. The light is held in one hand and the egg you wish to candle is held in the other. Gently press the egg down onto the cardboard and voila – you’re egg candling!

There is one bad Guinea fowl egg in the group of photographs below: located on the top row, second from the right. When you are egg candling and see a clear egg at this point, it’s not fertile or has some other problem. The point is, this egg will not hatch. The reason for egg candling is to determine eggs that won’t hatch, so you can free space in your incubator. Some people even perform egg candling on eggs in the nests of their Guinea fowl hens. We do not do this, but see no reason not to, if you want to do it.

There is also one questionable Guinea fowl egg in the group of photographs below: located on the bottom row, second from the right. We left this Guinea fowl egg in the incubator, and it did indeed hatch, but as you can see, the dark area, which is the developing keet, is rather faint. This questionable darkness/lightness is another reason to do your egg candling later in the incubation cycle. Everything becomes much easier to see.

To be clear, when you’re egg candling, the dark areas are the developing keet, assuming you’re candling Guinea fowl eggs. The light areas, on the smaller end of the egg shell, are the air sacks.

When you’re egg candling: handle the eggs gently, don’t keep them out of the incubator too long and replace them carefully.

Happy egg candling!

The photos below are of various guinea fowl eggs being candled on Day 9 of the 28 day (approximately) hatching cycle.

See a diagram showing the size of an egg's air cell on the 7th, 14th and 18th day of incubation.

See photos of an incubator setup with Guinea Fowl eggs.