Well, we threw away another 15 eggs tonight. All were non starters or very, very early quitters. All candled clear. That leaves us with 18 out of 41. I think we've decided that trying to hatch shipped eggs is a waste of money. Our first try was 18 Turken, 3 hatched and one had a really bad leg at hatch, and had to be put down. So 1/6 hatched. This was 24 eggs of varied breeds, and 5 are left. Personally, I think most of these were not fertilized. The previous few we through away at day 10 from the shipped eggs were all not fertilized. I think moving forward, unless I can pick up eggs locally to hatch, we'll hatch only our own and we'll get day old chicks to raise instead. Not as much fun as hatching, but, frankly, it isn't much fun throwing more than half an incubator away. Our test group, 17 of our own eggs, have done quite well. We've only pitched 4, all not fertilized, and all from a hen that died last week from unknown reasons, and she very well could have had internal reproductive issues.
I'm sure people have had good luck with shipped eggs. We haven't. We would have been perfectly happy with a 50% hatch rate from those. Disappointing...
But, on the flip side, everything that was progressing seems to be fine, so we could very well have a hatch of 18 eggs, which would certainly fill our main brooder
