Egg on Ground - Questions

Guest · Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:29 pm

My daughter found an egg on the ground today. I don't think it fell out of the house while I was doing nest checks b/c it was laying on the wrong side of the house and I just didn't see anything fall. I'm very gentle and slow when opening the house. The egg would have had to roll out over the porch rail and passed me to bounce to the other side of the house in grass. If it had fallen from 2 feet, I really don't think it would have broken that badly.

Anyway, I picked the egg up and it was cracked in 2 places (one big hole). The female should have been done laying eggs by the 24th. This egg on the inside looked blank - yellow yolk only.

Questions: When do you start seeing the yolk color change, little red veins appear, etc.? Also, how early into the process does a PM pair know if an egg isn't viable? I know they will roll them out of the nest to concentrate on the viable eggs. How the heck can they tell if one isn't growing into a chick?

Thanks,

Shel

Emil Pampell-Tx · Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:19 pm

Chicken eggs may be different, but when they are kept warm for about 3 or 4 days, you can easily see the veins etc in the egg. When I was young we had chickens on a farm, and we could not sell the eggs if a hen sat on them about 3 days. I bet its the same with martins. The martins may not be able to tell, maybe it belonged to a different cavity, and a SY male threw it out, or S&S also throw them out.

Guest · Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:29 pm

No S&S right now (thank goodness). I'm just wondering if this pair is having issues with the eggs being viable b/c she only has the 3 eggs when she should have more at this point. You're right, Emil. It may have been any number of reasons why the egg was on the ground. It's just my first time finding an egg like that, so I'm feeling yucky about it.

Thank you!

Emil Pampell-Tx · Fri Apr 28, 2006 2:18 pm

I found one about 8 days ago, it looked so good, but I didn't know where it came from. If I would put it into the wrong place, it may hatch a few days ahead of time, and cause the regular eggs not to hatch, so sometimes its difficult to know what to do with it. If you have a small colony and detailed records, sometimes you can tell where it belongs, and then you can quickly replace it. Often though, they throw it out again...strange. We can only do so much for them, the rest is up to them.

floridasunshinegoddess · Sat Apr 29, 2006 8:28 pm

Shelley, sorry to hear about the egg on the ground. I know it must have been upsetting for you. I hate to lose any... but it happens no matter how well we try to manage our colonies.

I don't know if the Martins can tell if an egg is fertile or not. Last year I had a complete nest of 5 infertile eggs. They didn't hatch when they were supposed to so I candled them and found they were clear.... so I threw them out and the couple renested, eventually fledging 5. Seems like they should have known something wasn't right with the eggs long before that.

Do you have subbies? If you don't have S&S's, that would be my guess too.

Guest · Sun Apr 30, 2006 1:14 am

I just thought of that today. The subbies did show up this week. The boys are poking their heads into all the rooms. Nothing much you can do about them. I hope it turns out to be just the one egg.

Thanks, everybody!

Shel

klcretired · Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:21 am

Good Mornin' Shel ,
That exact same thing has happened to me here at my site in the past.
I had alway thought that maybe when the females first start Mating & laying that the first egg's maybe Blank unfertile egg's...this is just me thinkin' now.....Like you, I don't have an S&S issue any more so i Definately know it's not them kickin' the egg's out.I still think that maybe some of the females produce a dummy/Blank egg..especially if they are a young female...Earlier this season while sittin' on my back Patio i saw a Dove flying just over my Head and she dropped an egg while flying...this also i thought may be a blank unfertile egg that she didn't want in her nest.
The dove i'm speakin' of did build a nest and have 2 babies in my Berry bush in my back yard.
Have a Goos One...TTYL,

floridasunshinegoddess · Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:17 am

Just my 2 cents worth again: I really don't think the birds can tell that the eggs are infertile until after incubation and they don't hatch..... Then they will often lay again. They don't necessarily discard the eggs then even and you often end up with 8-10 eggs in the nest.

So, I'm going to stick with my theory that it's subbies.