Diary & Notes ~ Air Cell Detatched SHIPPED Chicken Eggs for incubation and hatching

[ozexpat]

what a mess. i hate it when that happens.

how many eggs were in the box?

 

[grannychicken54]

Thanks Sumi
  iwil try and give her scrambled egg. Maybe shell eat I hope .I have had some get closer to regular size
So far she hasn't but yes I guess i should have give her vitimins all along to  help her
Shes my only Silver laced brahma pullet I have had hatch in  5 months from a silver laced  roo and gold laced hen.
Get  silver laced cockrels  or gold laced pullets!

Devastation with my prized Quechua and Colloncas eggs I have since wiped them all down in hopes of salvaging some. Some I thought were ok actually had some splatter on them too. I just hid and candled them while the kids were distracted. Some have no air cell that I can find, some have the yolk smashed up against one side, and all the ones that I can find an air cell in have the air cell full of bubbles and free rolling in the egg.

What happened did the PO do that to your eggs. That is terrible I am so sorry packed the way they were it had to be a very rough trip. I am very sorry these eggs are hard to come by and the breeds are amazing. Maybe you can save some.

 

[sumi]

Quote: Yes, a degree over the ideal you're looking at chicks hatching a day early maybe, but over that you're heading for handicapped and possibly dead chicks. If the core temperature of the egg reaches 104* you can pretty much guarantee the embryo will be dead. That's why slightly too cold is preferable to slightly to hot, though as close is possible to the "perfect" temp is best.

 

[familypendragon]

OK well interestingly - I have my hatcher going since yesterday to get it ready for tonight. I haven't changed the settings since the last (disastrous) hatch. With my hygrometer laying down it was saying 99. I stood it up and it now says 102. So I guess it is the same setting really.

 

[loveourbirds]

Well, if you can't find any fertile eggs for sale anywhere and you want to hatch something, there's only thing for it, hey? Meet Jack:

i can see it now the "african sumi" breed is gonna flourish.

 

[ozexpat]

Well, if you can't find any fertile eggs for sale anywhere and you want to hatch something, there's only thing for it, hey? Meet Jack:

'N haan! Hoe slim!

Who would have ever thought of that!

 

[ozexpat]

I copied this over from my post in a NOOBs thread

Shipped eggs are a crap shoot. a few fun facts

USPS uses fedex to move their priority mail across the country. Except for a few major road routes like Sacramento to Los Angeles on the 5 freeway, anything over about 300 miles goes on a plane to Memphis then on another plane to its destination. Its not really about distance once you get a few hundred miles from home.. Some of my best hatches have come from Florida.

Postal workers only handle the boxes for the first and last few hundred feet of the route. Mega-automated machines look at the barcodes, and throw the packages onto conveyor belts. If my 70lb box is below your box of eggs in the bin, its landing on top of your eggs on the belt. This means that for most of the journey, whether you pack them upright or sideways, or if you mark fragile on the box does not mean squat.

Putting do not x-ray on the box is a waste of time. Most packages will never be x-rayed and do you think if the post office was on high alert they would not xray because you asked them nicely? So did the terrorist? Even if they did xray - the dose is so small on an airport scanner it wont effect eggs.

So what kills the embryos when you ship eggs.

- large or violent hits from boxes dropping or something being dropped on to them - causes egg breakages and broken aircells (get your local eggs and try to dislodge an aircell - its pretty hard.

- vibration. The blastoderm that will become the embryo is attached to the wall of the egg by very small "strings" that get broken

- temperature we all know an egg can be hatched after 10 days - but thats when its stored in a room at 55-60F.

- Pressure - planes are pressurized to between 8 and 10,000 feet. Next time you fly, fill a balloon up ro the size of a canteloupe before you take off. It will be a watermelon at 10000feet. The bigger the aircell (older the egg) the more saddled the air cell will become.

So how do you mitigate loss.

1. double box this provides protection from the hard hits.
2. pack eggs so they cannot move but they have shock absorption. I like pipe insulation as the cheapest and most effective way. Foam inserts are good but they cannot be too tight or they eggs will break from being squeezed when they get the first hard jolt. Bubble wrap is next but the eggs gave to have enough support in the box so they don't move around.
3 Avoid shipping in peak of summer and dead of winter.

buy local if you can
buy nearby if you cant
or
think about overnight shipping for valuable eggs. you pay 3-5 or more dollars per egg - say 42 bucks for a dozen. add 15 bucks for priority shipping, you get 4 to hatch. thats almost 15 bucks a chick. double shipping and get 6 to hatch and its 12 bucks a chick. its worth a thought. The eggs still travel the same distance but are on the road for 2 days less and therefore theoretically less exposed.

I dont overnight but I hold shippers accountable for their product, If packaging sucks I let them know. if the package is crap and I get breakage with leaking onto eggs i demand a full refund.

Its all about aircells - the fresher the eggs, the smaller the cell. The smaller the cell, the less damage it can do.

Its really about how many viable blastoderm cells there are versus killed cells when you initiate incubation but thats a whole other diatribe.

good luck

 

[Sally Sunshine]

Old curtains...what every fashionable chick is wearing. My attempts at sewing hen saddles with recycled material. Not bad for a girl who can't sew a straight line to save her life.

I will take 3 please! I need more!

 

[Sally Sunshine]

Devastation with my prized Quechua and Colloncas eggs

I have since wiped them all down in hopes of salvaging some. Some I thought were ok actually had some splatter on them too. I just hid and candled them while the kids were distracted. Some have no air cell that I can find, some have the yolk smashed up against one side, and all the ones that I can find an air cell in have the air cell full of bubbles and free rolling in the egg.

 

[kodster]

/

You did everything right and under such bad circumstances you got 7!! SUPER....
Love the light color Ams Were some of the ams parents light color or white? All are really cute Lemon cuckoo ..love one.
And Yes that first egg is VERY exciting isn't it! I whooped and hollered...... and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

I have no idea of the parent stock of the Ameraucanas... I got the eggs off eBay, from a NPIP breeder in South Dakota (since I'm in North Dakota, I thought it was a pretty good risk, and she sent me 11 eggs... I know they were super fresh when she sent them, because I asked her to hold off on shipping for a couple of weeks, which she accommodated me on, and she made sure that they were laid the Sunday before she shipped them).

Thanks for the birthday wishes! And BTW, I now have 7 Black Copper Marans in lockdown (today is officially Day 18, but put them in lockdown last night at the last turning of the day, since I set them in the afternoon, and you count that day as Day 0). Since you can't see too much in such dark eggs, and all I saw was darkness when candling them, and the clearly defined air cells, I did a float test on them, and every single one of them wiggled in the water, rockin' and rollin'. In fact, one of them rolled over in the basket I had them in to candle them (since I had other eggs in the 'bator on staggered hatch, and removed them to put into my hatcher), before I transferred them to the hatcher. These came from ne Texas, and got them off eBay, too, and they're show quality birds. I have 13 more eggs from this same breeder, same breed, due to hatch on 8/29/13, and they sent me 14 in that batch. One of the eggs cracked around the middle two days ago, but there was nothing wrong with it. Eggtopsied it, the yolk was intact, but it didn't do anything. The rest, though, are all showing veining, as of last night, when I candled them on Day 7.

Out of 13 hens in my oldest flock (the chicks you see in my avatar), which are now 20 weeks old, 4 are officially laying. I have 7 eggs sitting in a bowl on my kitchen counter, 1 in in my incubator, and I know that we lost 2 eggs (1 was crushed before I saw it... likely the very 1st one, and the 1 you see in my post was sitting next to it... and another 1 the next day that had a very soft shell, and it was torn in two). So, that's 10 eggs in 4 days. The last 2 days, I've gotten 3 eggs a day.