Shipped eggs question

[seventreesfarm]

The eggs I bought arrived last night instead of this coming Friday like I expected. The problem is that my main incubator is full, and going into lockdown tonight, probably won't be empty until Sunday evening. The shipped eggs were probably gathered Fri/Sat Jan 13th/14th, and are now sitting in my workroom recovering from their trip.

I'm assuming 8 or 9 days is way too long for shipped eggs to wait (though I've had great results with homegrown eggs up to 10 days), so what about digging out my old foam 'bator tonight and putting them in until Sunday, then moving them to the main incubator? Too much jostling?

The foam bator is such a pain to keep steady, not to mention buried behind a bunch of stuff in storage, but

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Eh, to me it sounds like you are in a "six of one/half dozen of another" situation here -- you may well see decreased hatch rate from the less reliable incubator just as you may from extended rest time, though, imo, even for shipped eggs you really aren't at that much risk of any decrease in hatch in that time frame so much as from simply being shipped eggs to begin with. *I* would just wait and run the entire incubation in ol' reliable.

 

[Bryam]

I would put you old batch of home grown eggs into lockdown into the old incubator to hatch. I would then clean out the more reliable one and put them into right away. If the shipped eggs were not expensive, then disregard what I said and put them into the reliable incubator on Sunday. But dont expect a great hatch with shipped eggs.

 

[seventreesfarm]

My current batch might be hatching a bit sooner than planned, so I think I will just let the shipped eggs hang out until I get the big bator swamped. I've hatched (or attempted to) enough shipped eggs to have low expectations. It helps to source them as close to home as possible, and hope the PO doesn't play soccer with them. I didn't fuss with them too much, but the ones I checked looked way less scrambled than some I've gotten from across the country.

Fingers crossed!