Candling peafowl eggs helps improve hatch rates. To candle naturally incubated peafowl eggs remove a few eggs at a time from underneath the peahen.

I prefer to remove eggs in the dark as the peahen is unlikely to get off the eggs. Also the peahen will be calmer if she is disturbed during darkness.

Be careful when removing the eggs as the peahen may peck your hand! Do not remove all the peafowl eggs at the same time.

Candling peafowl eggs

You need to be quick to ensure that the eggs stay warm during the candling process. It is easy to make your own low cost candler.

Get a torch which can be stood up on its end with the light shining up vertically.

Find a hard piece of card about 6 inches or 15 centimetres, cut a hole cut in the centre about one inch or two centimetres in diameter.

Alternatively you can use a purpose made candler!

Turn on the torch and stand on its end with the light shining upwards.

Put the piece of card on top of the torch resulting in the light shining through the hole in the centre of the card.

Hold the egg up to the torch on top of the card with the wider end at the bottom touching the card.

You will need to be in a darkened room.

If the egg is fertile you should see veins or a darker spot within the egg.  Any peafowl eggs that glow translucent are unfertilised.

Discard any unfertilised peafowl eggs, this gives the fertilised eggs a better chance of hatching. If there are less eggs in the peahens nest the remaining eggs are more likely to remain under the peahen.

I mark the eggs that have already been candled, consequently eggs are not accidentally removed from the nest a second time. As often the peahen has moved the eggs around.

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