Counter vs Fridge what are your rules?

[Rick589]

I don't know what the magic temperature is. I've read several different things and don't always believe everything I read.

A fertile egg is always developing. It if stops developing it is dead. How fast it develops depends on the temperature. Below a certain temperature that development is so slow it does not affect hatch date nor does anything visual show up in the egg. It's not technically suspended animation but it is pretty darn close. A hen hiding a nest may lay an egg two full weeks or more before she starts incubating them. Even with those two weeks of "development" it is so slow that the egg will hatch at the same time the other later eggs do.

Unless they are stored at incubation temperature, these eggs will never hatch. If they are stored pretty warm but less than incubation temperature they may develop enough so you could see something before they die. I've read that temperature could be as low as the mid 80's Fahrenheit (30 C) but I don't believe it. I think they may have been talking about storing eggs for hatching, not eating.

Still, there is a limit, whatever it may be. I store my hatching eggs and eating eggs at room temperature, which for me means below the upper 70's. In the summer the AC is set on 78. And I limit how long I store hatching eggs to one week. The ideal temperature to store hatching eggs is about 55 F (13 C). 78 F is a long way from that but it still works for me.

Our eggs can have meat spots or egg spots in them. Those have nothing to do with a rooster or fertility, they have other causes. I occasionally get blood or meat spots but I've never seen development from fertility. Fertility development would mean blood vessels running through the whites.

If you store them in the fridge fertile eggs will not develop. The closer you are to freezing and the longer you store them that cold the less likely the eggs are to hatch but many will still hatch even if you store them pretty cold. Close to freezing is not ideal but neither is my 78.

In case I've confused you with all this, putting your fertile eggs straight in the fridge will work great.

 

[Rick589]

Thank You. Yeah, we ended up with two roosters and have not decided what to do with them yet. Never wanted to have the additionally thought of fertilized eggs when we just wanted eggs to eat. Of course, now we’re attached to the boys.