14 days is too long to store turkey hatching eggs

[Arielle]

Found a study looking at hatchability of turkey eggs.

It compared eggs held for 4 days and 14 days. At 4 days, hatchability was 89% and at 14 days 69%.
(Reported by the Univeristy of Saskatchewan http://www.poultryindustrycouncil.ca/pdfs/factsheets/fs_96.pdf

Definitely worth setting eggs to hatch every 7 days.

 

[NYRIR]

Good to know...I will be trying my hand at hatching them next year...will need another bator for hatching I guess!

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I'd say that's fairly typical. The longer you hold the eggs the lower the hatch rate is going to be. I've hatched turkey eggs that were three weeks old and got a bit more than 50%. Normally though I prefer to keep them no longer than ten days and better still a week or less. When I take hatching eggs to the swaps they are always a week or less old so as to have the best possible chance of hatching.

 

[MissTurkey4]

I am lucky that I can fill a incubator in two days. My eggs are never more than two days old. It was not always like that. I have much better hatches now that I don't have to store them. I think in my heat, 14 days and I would have eggs explode.

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

delete