Aussie Finch Forum

a gentleman on another bird site posted they when he candled his gouldians eggs he saw 5 tiny worms wiggling around in the egg.

can anyone shed some light on if this is possible? or what could be happening?

the gentleman is new to finches.....

misso

Im only guessing but i think they might be pulsating blood veins Cheers Craig

Bit bored here so did a bit of Googling. Seems roundworms in chicken eggs are possible (but extremely rare). What about a Gecko in a chook egg? Might replace bacon and sausages.

Sometimes with heavy worm infestations some worms can migrate back into the oviduct from the cloaca and therfore get incorporated into a developing egg.
It does happen occasionally, and with chickens which lay daily is much more likely to be seen, but still rare.
For it to happen in a gouldian you would have to have a parasite in the oviduct at the same stage that egg is being formed- an extremely unlikely event.

They may be blood vessels as Crocnshas says. The only sure way is to open up the eggs, but he can probably wait until the incubation period is over.

I would certainly be breaking one egg that appeared to have worms in it to determine if it was worms. Probably best to have a microscope handy.

If it is a worm are they then able to get into the chick?

I have never heard of worms in eggs, or seen this myself. I regularly worm my birds with Ivermectin usually in late March (last weekend) before the show season, and in August before breeding commences.

When I candled my Cockatiel eggs a few weeks back I was lucky enough to see the embryo move, I can imagine how this could look like worms, I'd say he was seeing the early embryo or just some of the blood vessels

thanks for the comments everyone