bought refrigerated eggs from a produce stand and they're developing!

[chkinut]

hi everyone! i have some exciting things going on in my bator this year. i bought a dozen refrigerated eggs (and when i opened them they were all wet with loads of dew and stored pointy side up) from a produce stand last weekend and i thought "what the heck" and thought i'd give them a try in the bator. i dried them off, put them in and i opened one yesterday (cuz i knew i was getting MORE eggs to put in the bator) and there is growth! it will be interesting to see the hatch rate and to see what kind of chickens i get. i also went to a farm yesterday and my friend gave me a bunch of eggs that her hens were sitting on (not all of them.....but they had so much under them they couldnt cover them all). they were very poopy so i brought them home and scraped off the chunks and put them in. we shall see what happens there too. i candled a few of them and they are in early stages or unfertile. but i doubt they're unfertile.....she has lots of roosters. so.....we shall see. they are probably at the same stage as my produce stand eggs....so thats good.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, that will be interesting to see what happens. You have to remember that most of the stuff on here are guidelines, not absolute laws of nature. They don’t guarantee absolute success or absolute failure but are intended to improve your odds of success. Refrigerating an egg does not guarantee the egg won’t hatch, it just reduces the odds of it hatching. How much those odds drop depends on the individual egg, how long it is refrigerated, and how cold that refrigerator actually is. Some people on this forum that are in hot climates may not have a good place to store eggs. The refrigerator is the best they can do. They often get good hatches.

Just because an egg is clear and does not develop does not mean it wasn’t fertile. There are a lot of things that can cause a fertile egg to be clear. It could have something to do with the health and nutrition of the parent flock, but usually it is related to how the egg was handled and stored. As long as you didn’t shake them up too much transporting them home, they should be OK. I’ve made that mistake before. I had over half clear when most were fertile when I shook them up bringing them home. Boy was I mad at myself.

 

[chkinut]

thanks for the input! i candled them all yesterday and i think i have 3 different hatch dates. and my bator stinks cuz of the soiled eggs! i cleaned them up the best i could (dry cleaning). i am keeping my eye on them (bacteria rings etc). i threw one away yesterday due to a very obvious ring. we shall see how things go!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Keep sniffing the individual eggs. You don't want one to go bad in the incubator whether it explodes or not. If one is bad you should be able to tell it really clearly by sniffing.