Broody off eggs in nest box for about 5 hours, are eggs dead?

[brummie]

I made a seperate broody box for my broody. She had been sitting on eggs for about a week and I had candled them, they were developing fine. Last night I moved her and her eggs to the new broody box. This morning I went to check on her and she was not in the broody box! She was sitting back in her old nest box. Not sure how she could have possibly got out, but I blocked off a couple of what I thought were very small gaps.

So sunrise is at about 5.45 here and I checked on her at about 10.45. So I'm guessing the max time she was off the eggs that she had been sitting on for a week was 5 hours. COuld have been less, I don't know what time she moved. The eggs were cool to touch so it must have been atleast a couple of hours I'm guessing. I moved her back onto her eggs in the broody box and she settled down fine on them.

The thing is, if she has been off those eggs for upto 5 hours, should I discard them, are they dead now considering they are cool to the touch? Is that too long, with the weather being about 43 early this morning going upto about 53 by 10.45am?

 

[randerson846]

They are a week old? I would leave them there's still a chance, I've heard of people hatching abandoned eggs , which have been left for longer than that, so u should be okay, let me know how it goes good luck

 

[sumi]

I've had eggs go quite cold during incubation, due to power failures and broody mishaps and they survived the cool down periods and hatched without issues. I'd say give them a few days and candle them again to check if they are still on track.

 

[brummie]

That's good to hear randerson and sumi, gives me some hope. Yes they are exactly 7 days old. I have left them them and will probably candle a couple of them in a day or two.

 

[sumi]

Keep us posted. Fingers crossed!

 

[brummie]

So I candled the only white egg under her today on day 11 (a dorking egg, the others are difficult to candle as they are quite dark shelled including welsummer eggs) and fortunatley it seems to be devleoping fine. It now has large patches of darkness as the chick is getting bigger, but at certain angles the spider veins can still be clearly seen. If this egg is ok, i'm guessing the others hopefully made it also.

 

[randerson846]

Good, hope all goes well