refrigerated eggs for hatching

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catterbug

catterbug

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I have a broody chicken and was wondering if I put some fertilized eggs from the frig under her, will it be possible to still get baby chicks since the eggs had been refrigerated. Also is there a way to see for sure if the eggs have been fertilized for sure before I put them under her. My friend has 3 roosters and she said maybe only some of them from the frig may be fertile.
 
Viability of a FERTILIZED egg will drop if kept in the refrigerator for any length of time.
Cool about 50F (not cold) and dark with good humidity is the normal way of saving fertile eggs for incubation. A maximum of 7 days. After the seven day period the first save lose better than 50% of their chance at hatch and that drops daily for every extra day saved thereafter
 
You're dealing with life. There are no magic numbers or hard and fast answers.

There is no practical way to tell if the eggs are fertile without either incubating them or cracking them open,
in which case you cannot incubate them. Sorry.

There are the ideal conditions you can store eggs for incubation and the best you can do. The closer you can get to the ideal conditions the better your odds of success, but being off does not guarantee failure. Many of us don't keep the eggs in ideal conditions and still do pretty good. I wish I had a place where the temperatures were around 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but I don't so I do the best I can.

Not all refrigerators are kept at the same temperature and the temperature is not the same in all the different places inside a refrigerator. There are people that don't have a real good place to store hatching eggs in the heat of summer so they keep them in a fairly warm spot in the refrigerator. It's the best they can do and often they do pretty well.

Many people on this forum have hatched refrigerated eggs. How good a hatch rate you get will vary. The cooler they are stored and the longer they are stored, the worse your odds of a good hatch, but that is just odds.

If you can get some fresh eggs that have not been refrigerated, that would be better. You are not in an immediate rush to get eggs under the broody. Just give her some fake eggs for a few days while you are gathering the eggs you want her to hatch. Broodies cannot count days. She will not stop being broody in exactly 21 days. You have time.
 
refrigitaded eggs wont hatch everyone knows they cant hatch ,but if get eggs from onother chiken and give it to your chikens they hatch and will become happy chiks
 
Yes you can hatch chickens from eggs that have been in the frig for about up to a month a little longer for quail eggs. Ive hatched out quail eggs that have been in the frig for 6 weeks and chicken eggs that have been in the frig for around 2 weeks and its fine.
 
I have 17 chicks from refrigerated eggs hatched 3 days ago.
 
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After my first ever successful hatch of silkie chicks, I had the hatching bug - couldn't wait to do it again. After reading this thread I decided to pull out my refrigerated eggs and give it a try. I set 23 of them. I candled them this morning and life is in 14 of them.
I had no intentions (or idea that I even could) hatch refrigerator eggs so I taken no special care of them prior to setting them in the incubator. Some of them were at least 3 weeks old. I'm guessing those are the ones that haven't developed.
 
I found a neighbor had duck eggs and since we have a world's supply of snails and millions of Banana Slugs here at the farm (and I raise heritage vegetables for seed), I decided I needed ducks. I don't bring live chicks in unless it is from a certified source (NPIP), usually incubate fertile eggs instead. This is the first year I have ever raised ducklings/ducks. When the neighbor dropped the eggs off on my porch when I was not home, I found out later that the eggs had been refrigerated for 2 weeks and (ugh).. these were so filthy I could not even see a shell on most of them. Out of 14 of them, I washed 12 under cold running water with a scrubby pad to get them clean, disposed of the other 2 which would not come clean, let them sit for 24 hours, marked them with pencil and then put them into a waiting incubator (along with turkey, chicken and pheasant eggs). I have been hatching eggs for a couple decades (I swear I don't feel THAT OLD!) and knew I was doing everything pretty much not by the book, but took a gamble as I knew it was probably hopeless with having flilthy eggs which had been in the for 14+ days in the fridge anyway and figured after I candled them, they would be soon composted for lack of fertility.

Huh..... Mother Nature is a funny thing. 11 of the 12 eggs were fertile and developing. On hatching day, all of the 11 eggs started hatching and I got ducklings from 9 of them. 2 of the smallest eggs hatched out weak ducks and they died less than 12 hours later and 2 which started pipping quit on me after 24 hours. But 7 ducklings have survived now and are a week old.

Once I would have said, "Don't bother with refrigerated eggs". Now I would say "Take the gamble, it is just a bit of electric and a bit of room in your incubator". On a side-note, I also put in 12 Buff Orpington eggs with the duck eggs in another gamble, as the rooster had been sold 9 days before the eggs I stuck in the incubator were even laid. I got 6 chicks out of 12 eggs. I was hoping to get three at best. I was smiling.

Cedar
 
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