Left wing malposition. Egg #LA512

Condor Peeps!! Thought Id share this video I took today. Geoff had to go into a nest yesterday to check an egg and hadnt seen this done yet and I tried to describe it over the phone, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so check this out. This egg cannot hatch because the embryo is in what is considered a lethal malposition in most all birds. Here is a technique of perforating the shell for a chick that is all but hatched but cant quite rotate on its own. Using the knuckle of my pointer finger a controlled depth of maybe 1/4 inch is pressed into the shell perforating it so that the chick can escape the egg in time. The parents will instinctively remove the small broken pieces of shell to aid the chick as well. This should be done only after the chick is overdue or if you can confirm there is no active vesseling. It has been taken out of the incubator and is going to be placed with foster parents to rear it. But before we relinquish control over it we need to know that it can escape the confines of its egg. The other keeper feeds the pair and distracts them so they are not focused on the nest temporarily. The perforation is done just before placement so that it doesnt hatch before it can be placed.