2011 hatch rate for shipped eggs - so far we are not doing so great

[Knix6468]

We are not having very good luck with shipped eggs this year. Our own eggs are hatching about 90% if it wasnt for that we would be asking ourselves questions like too hot
too cold not enough humidity, not sanitized, not enough turning, too much turning. We have sold about 4 batches of eggs this year on ebay and I hope that our customers
had good hatch rate with those.

The Ebay seller we have had the best luck with lives the furthest away, we have had a batch of their eggs 5 out of 6. We also had good luck with 4 out of 6 from a more northern
seller - about equal distance, but then the second batch from the same seller yielded 2 in the hatcher out of 6. Some batches we have purchased yielded 0 birds into the hatcher.

Most that don't hatch have some type of development Its rare that they are not fertile, and I have no reason to think that the sellers are sending me anything but fresh fertile eggs.
Some boxes are marked Hatching eggs fragile, some just fragile, some not marked at all. The box markings nor the way that they are wrapped seem to have anything to do with the
hatch rate. In fact right now I have 1 in the hatcher right now that was part of a box that was misdirected and took over 10 days to get here, out of 6 eggs purchased from the same
seller Only one potential bird, and sent in 3 different boxes (2 per box other boxes arrived in 2-3 days) . It is so random, could be heat, could be jostle, could be altitude, could be xrays,
could be falling off a truck, I dont know. Some of the eggs were on the small side and I questioned those when I got them in, (none of those made it past 19 days - yes I left them in extra time
because I really wanted those birds, and I didnt want to prematurely toss them)

I am wondering if anyone else is going to post their final hatch rate for shipped eggs,, (I seen a post earlier on it but I couldn't find it today.) We are keeping track but so far and
It would have made much more financial sense to purchase day old chicks. If I knew now what I knew then I would have ordered chicks. But we have already spent the farm on eggs this year and
are out of money for buying. We are trying to sell our India blue chicks locally to make up the money we invested in eggs, and new pens this year. But so far its not encouraging we
have only sold 5 of our 40+ india blue pea chicks.

It would just be nice to break even.

 

[Misssc]

My shipped eggs hatched today. I had bronze eggs shipped from Ohio to Virginia. The seller sent me seven eggs but four of them came broken. I set the remainder and none developed or hatched. The seller sent me another shipment at no cost, this time six. 83%fertile, 60% live chicks, two eggs had fully developed chicks but died.

 

[Kedreeva]

I hope people post their rates, but really, shipped eggs are almost always low on the hatch rate compared to ones from your own birds- especially when they ship in a hot time of the year (which is the only time peas lay, unfortunately). A lot of times you may get eggs that were fertile, but they got too hot for too long, incubated just a day or so, and then were cooled again (often by people letting them "settle" outside the incubator in a cool place like you're 'supposed' to) and died. These eggs would not develop in the incubator and would resemble infertile eggs.

They tracked a summer's worth of egg hatch rates between incubator eggs and broody eggs on the chicken hatching forums- turns out both average to 50% (so it didn't matter if your hen hatched them or your incubator hatched them), and included both shipped and personal eggs. I imagine if you did a similar tracking of just shipped eggs, you'd find an overall average that was lower than that, simply due to shipping conditions.

Good luck with your findings!

 

[NateinFL]

I can't find any buyers for my four peachicks and they are several months old, all I'm asking is $15, I did sell 5 others as babies. I'm taking them to the auction Sunday.

About those shipped eggs, it's like playing the lottery in my opinion.

 

[Knix6468]

what a morning, day 30 for the 4 shipped eggs we had in the hatcher, Update of the 3 of the 6 from the same seller that we got 5 birds out of 6 we have maybe one. The peeps (noises) were declining
(we can hear them thru the glass). We decided to see if we could help the one that was in the most dire shape first, he was breathing and moving when I started to help him out, I got him part way out, and wanted to see if he would push himself out the rest of the way so I let him rest inside of a warm damp towel inside the hatcher for about 20 min. When I came back to him he was no longer breathing, and I decided to open shell all the way to find out what happened.,,,, OMW he had a birth defect where his skull was split open and his brains were extruded out like a hat. (NO He wasn't stuck and pulled out) they were actually coming out his head for no reason starting at the beak no top of head but perfectly formed eyes. and rest of body. His top beak was also deformed instead of straight, the top was bent up then kind of down like a parrot, the bottom was shaped fine and stuck out normal length.


Second bird was more active in the shell but he was also way over due. with no pipping on 30 days+ . but peeping and clicking in the egg. ATM he is still alive, BUT, his cord was wrapped
around his wing, over his head and his head is formed funny due to the cord tying him up where it was pulled tight, his beak was no where near reaching the outer shell. I pretty much broke all the
shell off except where his cord was, and when I turned the egg so he should just kind of fall out, that is when I seen how tied up he was. He is bleeding but alive, for now. **edit** he is going to live
!!!! bleeding has stopped, he is sitting up and scooting around, I have gave him water, He will live!!
3 egg never peeped or pipped.

Same seller, same incubating process, still shipped via USPS. but, this box must have been xrayed or handled poorly by them. I mean USPS

The other egg that we had in the hatcher has also quit making any noise and presumed dead. ( Opened it up, it quit developing way early only had runny stuff and yellow yoke,I guess we were just wanting it to be a bird so bad that we thought we seen and heard more than we actually did when candleing ) so from this one seller 6 eggs purchased sent in 3 packages yielded 0 birds. I got the impression that this seller
used the service where they call and tell USPS that they have a package and the mail man picks it up. (which would add one day of jiggling and riding around in a mail truck potentially the rest of the day before it got to the main post office to start the mailing process) besides potential xrays and one box had 10 day delay