Egg mismanagement, broody hens, scary looking cracked egg...

Andora

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I have a couple questions.

I gave birth a couple weeks ago and left the eggs and chickens to my husband. He forgot to collect the eggs everyday. He also didn't feed them everyday, but that's a different story. Once I got back on my feet I went out and found a broody hen in each coop. I asked my husband how long the 2 hens had been sitting and he said he hadn't noticed but told me he'd been taking eggs out from under hens when he collected eggs. He said the longest he went without collecting was 2 or 3 days.

I sell all my eggs. I'm normally careful and I collect every day, sometimes more than once a day. Now I don't know what to do...I have 200+ eggs in here and some of them may or may not have been sat on for a few days! What would you do? Candle them? Trash them? Assume they are fine? For what it's worth, the ones I've eaten for breakfast before I realized DH's mix up have looked normal...no veins forming. (Ewww!)

Second question--I moved the 2 broody hens and their current stack of eggs into a chicken tractor with a little coop attached. One kept sitting on her egg pile. The other spazzed out and tonight I went out and found her off of the nest. An egg from her nest was cracked open, but it looks like it's hard boiled! What in the world does that mean!?! There was also yolk all over the other eggs and I'm not sure if that came from the hard boiled looking egg or another egg. It's a bit of a mess in her nest. It doesn't smell like rotten eggs and there's nothing green or oozing, just the freaky hard boiled looking egg. This adds to my concern about the eggs my DH brought inside.
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I guess I'm going to throw away all of the eggs in the abandoned nest. The other broody is still sitting, maybe if she'll let me I can steal an egg from her nest and candle it to see what's up in there..
 
Your egg issue - been there done that - TWICE my DH took the eggs out from under a broody. I found that I could feel something moving inside if I shook the egg. Ugh, it makes it difficult when they do that!!!

Your second question - are you sure your are not seeing a dried out membrane? It would look hard boiled if it is stiff and dried out.
 
Dried out membrane...that would make sense! In the light tomorrow I'll pick it up and see. For some reason half developed eggs really gross me out, lol.

I candled three eggs from under the other broody and the yolks were sloshing, so I guess either they aren't developing or they haven't yet. I have no clue if they were fresh eggs or ones she's been sitting on for a few days. Guess I'll wait and see! I've never had a broody stay broody after being moved to her own space...I'm really excited.

I candled a few eggs from the ones DH mixed up. The first two I candled had solid looking yolks. DH opened one and it had spider veins. Looked like day 3. GAG. Now I really don't know what to do. No one would ever buy eggs from me again if I sold them partially developed chicks. I hate to throw away all of these eggs.
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Do you think I'd be ok if I candled every single egg and kept the ones with sloshing clear yolks to sell?
 
To be safe, you should toss them or keep them for your own use. I had to keep mine for us to use instead of selling them. The ones under your broody that slosh are probably no good. Can you see the air sac?
 

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