Advice on hatching shipped turkey eggs

[Shaun]

After an expensive and disasterous attempt to hatch turkeys from shipped eggs last year, I'm looking for any advice anyone has. I've been told by one person that it's almost impossible to successfully hatch shipped eggs due to x-rays used by the post office. Should we ask for UPS or FedEx shipping?
Last year out of two separate batches with a total of 40 eggs - we got ONE success.
We are driving some distance to obtain some poults this year from the place we bought the one successful shipped egg , but would really like to obtain eggs from different flocks to broaden the bloodline.
We "rested" the eggs for 12 hours, kept close watch on the temp and humidity with two thermometers, and had very poor luck. We have a hovabator with fan that seems to hatch chicks with almost no troubles at all.
Would appreciate any ideas. Thanks!

 

[willowcol]

I hatch shipped eggs all the time, and average about 50%.

 

[MandyH]

This is just my take on things, but I think the larger the egg, the more damage is done when shipped. I don't know if it's because there is more egg white to get shaken or what. I sell chicken and turkey eggs all the time and my fertility and hatch rate here at home is excellent, but my shipped turkey eggs always do worse than my chicken eggs. That's just my 2 cents.

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

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[Harp Turkey Ranch]

Would have to agree with Steve.

These days some people are shipping any and every egg laid by their hens and some don't even check fertility. Turkey eggs seem to be more fragile then chicken eggs. But alot of it has to do with the packing. Even need to find out how they store the egg before they ship them. Some people don't know they need to be 55 deg. while storing.

There is just too many factors that play in to the hatch rate on the shipped eggs.

Best thing to do is really figure out how the eggs are treated by who ever you are going to buy them from and how old the birds are that the eggs are coming from..

After getting them let them slowly reach room temps i like to keep them in the box for the first 4-6 hrs after getting them and then open them up and put them in an egg carton and finish reaching room temps. 24 hrs after getting them then I'll set them in the bator. Don't worry about getting them in the bator fast as another day will not hurt anything, but warming them too fast will kill them.

 

[muscovy94]

I got five shipped eggs last year from my friend in texas and everyone single one of them hatched, so shipping eggs does work, you just have to be lucky i guess.....


ETA: These were turkey eggs....

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

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[jenjscott]

I have had chicken and turkey eggs shipped and found that the large saddled and misplaced air cell was much more common in the turkey eggs than in the chicken eggs. I did hatch a few turkeys, but not enough to justify the expense of the eggs for just turkeys. If I were into a breeding program or showing and absoultely had to have eggs from xbreeder, I would buy extras and be willing to accept my losses. In the long run it would have been much cheaper and less heartbrteak to buy the poults from a hatchery.

 

[Shaun]

So, forget about the eggs, huh? I spoke with another guy from here in Michigan, he got 5 poults from 80 eggs! He thinks everything that goes thru Detroit gets x-rayed for Homeland Security as it's a border point. Urban myth, maybe, but has anyone her in Michigan had good hatches in the past year or two from shipped eggs of turkeys?