Do you seem to get better hatch rates from shipped quail eggs than chicken eggs?

[KYBOY]

It seems to me that I get much better hatch rates from shipped quail eggs than I do shipped chicken eggs..I just hatched about 70% from a bacth of 120 shipped eggs..Last year about the same. It always seems to be about 50% for shipped chicken eggs for me..Anyone else noticed this?

 

[ThaJuicyJuice]

I have gotten 90-100 from both.... I've even had 0 %. It comes down to if the eggs are busted and more importantly the stability of the incubator. I've taped up cracked eggs from shipping and they've hatched. Let shipped eggs rest.

Just a side note. I run my incubators a bit hot at 100-101. I have good hatch rates and they come a bit earlier.

 

[dc3085]

How good they hatch has everything to do with how they got from point A to B with almost any eggs. Some are more durable than others, for instance pheasant eggs don't ship well at all. Xray machines are hard on embryos (don't let anyone write 'do not xray' or its a guarantee they will), so are the constant temp fluctuations and the fact that they are surrounded by paper dessicating the air (too little humidity left after the paper sucks it up) The postal workers tossing them around breaks the air sac on a lot of eggs that don't look broken on the outside. Order as close to home as possible and explain to your post man whats coming (leave them a note if you have to, I think they can read but i've had more than one upside down box in my yard that says fragile so who knows).

Basically no two pieces of mail take the same route and the factors along the way are what screws up hatch assuming the fertility was good to begin with.

 

[ThaJuicyJuice]

There is great validity in what dc3085 is saying. We must also realize the anatomy and durability of an egg. They are developed in such a way that provide stability and protection to the contents. I've heard about x-raying and been worried about it before. But every time I've had eggs shipped to me, non hatched eggs always resulted from my mistakes. This was early on. Now that I have a little experience, my hatch rates are rarely under 90%. At less than 40 cents an egg off ebay. It's hard to beat this bottom line.