Hi again folks.
Lucy C was wondering how to check eggs for fertility before they start developing.
Well, this is how:
Crack the egg into a shallow dish. Wiggle it around a little bit and under some good light, look at the yolk until you see a little raised opaque dot/blob. It usually rises to the top of the yolk with a bit of a gentle wiggle. Do not confuse this little blobby bit with the taily bits at either end of the yolk that hold the yolk suspended evenly inside the egg. The little blobby bit you are looking for is actually the tiny fertilised bit of the egg - the zygote? It is attached to the yolk because the yolk becomes the food source for the little chick or duckling when it hatches.
Anyway, in a fertilised egg, this tiny little blobby bit looks a bit like a text book picture of Saturn - a tiny dot with fine whitish concentric circles around it. In an unfertilised egg, this little blobby bit is cloudy and unorganised. The difference is unmistakable once you have seen a fertilised egg.
Regardless of whether the egg is fertilised or not, it is probably time to pop the thing into a heated pan with a blob of butter, or into some muffin mix 'cause there is nothing you can do with it now except eat it!
Lucy C you could try this on one or two of your duck eggs - seems the little buggers are wasting them!
Let me know how you go.
3 comments:
Very interesting. I never knew about this test.
You are right about my eggs being wasted.
I have about thirty out there at the moment.
Bantam size and Pekin size.
And still no one sitting.
Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.
I don't think I will crack any of them because I am sure Bruce is doing his job.
Hopefully something will happen soon.
I am sick of labelling the eggs and then feeding them to the dogs.
Hiya! I found your blog when I googled "growing avocadoes in Canberra". Haven't tried it yet myself, but am determined to make it work next year. Good on you! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your avocadoes, so please let us know if they recover with the warm weather. Thanks also for the tip on how to tell girl kiwis from the boys (nobody in any Canberra nursery could help me with that one, and the tag fell off my lone kiwi years ago).
Hi Linda
Does that mean you are a fellow ONCian as well? Thanks for visiting my little blog. I am afraid that the spring avocado report will be a little depressing. It may end up being the "hey, look at my new mulberry orchard" report. I have a friend who's mother has an avocado seeding growing in her ONCian garden. It is a couple of meters high, has never flowered, and looses a couple of feet of leaves each winter, but comes back each spring.
I am SURE that with the right spot, it could work here in the ACT
sigh.....
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