eggs in the mail

[JoeQ]

Has anyone noticed a decrease in viability from buying eggs through the mail? I've heard that sometimes the extreme movements in the delivery system may drop the percentage of success. I would appreciate any info, positive or negative. If you had a positive experience please leave a link to their website if you don't mind. I'm specifically looking for jumbos, thank you very much, hope to hear from many!! Have a great day fellow quail people!

 

[Zinjifrah]

I can't really speak toward whether mailing eggs decreases viability or not. I can say that the eggs I've hatched came through the mail. An additional risk of getting them that way is that the postal service may x-ray the package. The first shipment I got was clearly marked on all sides with bright, colorful stickers - 'live embryos, do not x-ray!' and 'hatching eggs, handle with care!'. That was the first time I've ever tried to hatch eggs of any kind, and out of 18 Serama eggs, I got 4 healthy, thriving chicks that are currently 3 weeks old. There were 8 eggs that showed no signs of fertility, 3 that started to develop and then stopped, and 2 that went full term but appear to have died right before internal pipping. I currently have 22 more Serama eggs that I got through the mail in the incubator, set this morning, from a different source. The package arrived with 'Eggs' written in black sharpie on the top, nothing else. No request not to x-ray, no colorful stickers to draw attention to the fact that it's a fragile package that needs gentle handling. I just wait and see whether any of them end up being viable. Whether the losses in the first batch were due to shipping or my own inexperience, I cannot tell you.

 

[Fishkeeper]

Mailing eggs tends to decrease viability somewhat due to rough handling, but good-quality eggs in good packaging should do well with proper treatment. Any sort of transport is going to reduce the viability as compared to taking eggs right out of a nest and into incubation, and shipping is particularly rough.

 

[mdees88]

Funny you ask, I wrote this about hatching shipped jumbo coturnix eggs last night...
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/shipped-eggs-getting-a-bad-rap.1241117/

 

[koturnix]

This was my first hatch so I don't have a bunch of data to confirm on shipping viability (but I will definitely be hatching more ebay eggs in the future!).

The seller that I got my Coturnix eggs from sent 7 extra (I paid for 12). Out of the bunch 8 hatched so far (would have been 9 but one punctured its yolk sac while zipping...). I think it's a decent hatch rate considering the eggs were shipped from NC to CA (literally across the country, almost 3000 miles).

Packaging - the seller had labeled the box clearly with the bright stickers 'live embryos, do not x-ray!' and 'hatching eggs, handle with care!'. The eggs were inside a quail egg carton and taped around the carton was a hard cardboard shell. The bundle was doubled wrapped in bubblewrap and then secured with layers of newspaper in the box. Very impressive packaging with layers of protection. Every egg I received was undamaged.