Can a fertile egg be refrigerated and later be put in an incubator?

[countrybum]

Quote:
Eggs start losing their fertility after 7 days, after 10 days, you may as well pitch them.

 

[inohio]

Hi all. I've read here a lot but wanted to post. I'm currently trying to hatch eggs that have been refrigerated. I have 2 hens left after my neighbor's dog wiped out my rooster and six other birds. This week, one hen decided that she was going to sit her nest. I couldn't stand the thought of watching her go through all that for nothing, so went out and found eggs supposedly from a local farmer and am hoping at least a couple are fertile for her. I put a half dozen under her along with her eggs. Eventually I need to start getting her eggs out of there before they explode on her.

This dear little hen HATES to be touched in any way and will squawk up a storm... but since she's started setting, she won't leave her eggs for anything. I'm putting food/water for her and even as I was fussing around under her, the most she did was shake her tail around (likely to settle in the eggs I was cramming under there).

Well, here's hoping. I'm pretty sure the eggs are less than a week old. I'll post if anything comes of it.

 

[Sitka]

I once set some eggs that someone had given me. About 2 weeks in he called and said, "Oh yeah, I just remembered that I'd put those eggs in the refrigerator..." (Thanks for telling me now!) A few of them did hatch, but the chicks were crippled and could not walk and had to be culled.

ETA: Not that it makes any difference, but they were Barred Rocks.

 

[Josie360]

I just incubated 12 eggs that were refrigerated and had 5 hatch. They were Marans and Ameraucana eggs. I am not sure how long they were refrigerated before the hatch. I have refrigerated my guinea eggs for up to two weeks and had 60% or better hatches. Make sure and let the eggs warm to room temperature before placing them in the incubator Then precede as usual. Good luck.

 

[msm123]

How long can they stay in those conditions? I might want to store them during the winter and hatch them in the spring.

 

[walkswithdog]

Generally your hatch rates severely decline after more than a few weeks of refrigeration. Less so for long term cool counter storage.

But to the poster who said anything over ten days ..just throw it out? You can clean the brooders here when this batch hatches. There are seven dozen eggs, most older than two weeks, one dozen under, and three dozen that were over four weeks, and refrigerated or exposed to excessive heat.

Even have one about to hatch, wher first week the power failed for two days, got it going again and a power surge fried my thermostat and I got up to find my temps 113. The others died then or quit soon after. Thomas, the little orp who could is on day 19. He's doing fine as of this morning.

It's not over, until it's over. Many of my now developing hatch had free air cells due to shipping handling on top of the above conditions. The easiest way to fail is not to try.

Is it BEST to use fresh, well kept, gently handled eggs. You betcha. But NATURE herself is not kind. Brodie's have brains the size of peas. First time Broodies can be insane, lame, idiotic or worse. Nature makes poop, snow, ice, mud, rain, hail and disease, yet we have birds. Eggs are little miracle packages designed for variances common in nature and for challenges from it.

I've hatched healthy chicks from old, cold, muddy, hot, shaken and cracked eggs. Hatching is an art form. Drawing lines to make a coloring book helps people learn, but there IS art outside the lines. Nature is art. Life is art.

You can increase your odds but not past the point of luck. Even those huge hatcheries sometimes lose tens of thousands of "perfect eggs".

Playing with imperfection, means accepting that there is only so much you can do, and waiting on God to see if there is life in there. I actually like letting it roll on impossible eggs. They hatch or not, literally, God Willing. If I do my part and God does his/hers/theirs, voila, as close to a miracle as I am going to ever see in person.

Art and faith have much in common.

If it were a science, hatches would never fail for scientists.

Something else is going on. I happen to like being in touch with that.

 

[B J Hopkins]

Well, live and learn!! I thought it was a FACT that refrigerated eggs become sterile and won't hatch. Interesting that some of them CAN hatch. Never knew it.

 

[Breshcandra]

Yes you can. I have done it. =)

 

[areeb]

i have peafowl eggs which hatch at 28 days like turkeys, if i refrigeratated them at day 25 and kept them in for 4 days would they hatch?

 

[veggiecanner]

it Isn't expensive to run the incubator, But I think it makes more sense to only run it with the best eggs possible. just running it to run it seems silly.