I am new to this forum, but I have experience with hatching TX Indigo eggs. I have had a very bad experience with waiting for all eggs to pip at their own pace. As someone in a post states the eggs can become a prison. If the shells become too dry on the top the baby will not be able to cut through. In the experience I had, one pipped and I waited two days and began to cut the eggs only to find 13 of the 14 fully developed babies dead in the shell. All the eggs had marking or cuts in the bottoms of the shells but did not find their way out the bottom of the eggs. I assumed it was not a natural way for them to go, down and out. The window of opportunity for hatching and not suffocating does not seem to be too long. They die if they cannot get a hole in the egg timely. Since then I have made it a common practice to cut every egg on all species as soon as I notice one pipped. I have not had any further instances of mass casualties since. I have also cut eggs too early in the past and still had the babies hatch (up to two weeks later)with no outward effects. After determining the eggs were early I covered the slit with a small piece of celophane wrap to seal the opening. The eggs still hatched even though some bleeding from superficial blood vessels occured.

Do not get me wrong, I do not profess routinely cutting eggs to check on progress, but because of the tragic outcome I had, I have decided to take it out of nature's hands. One could say that since we are taking the responsibility of hatching these eggs in artificial conditions, we are already taking it out of nature's hands and I feel we need to take on some of the responsibility to give every opportunity for success for the babies to hatch.

Everyone needs to procede as they deem right, this is only my opinion but it has worked for me.

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