fertile vs. nonfertile eggs, which keeps longer?

[la dee da]

I read somewhere that nonfertile eggs keep longer then fertile eggs. I am now curious if that is true and if so, if it's a very important thing (1 month vs. 4 months kind of thing). Also, if fertile eggs were kept on the counter during the warm months of summer...would the embryo start to develop? I have searched and searched for the answer on this site but it seems no one has asked this specific question

(although I did get great info on how long eggs will keep). So those are my questions and I would love to get answers...but don't be TOO scientific, as I'm not so good at big words

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[jhm47]

There would be no difference.

 

[la dee da]

Forgive my skepticism, but how are you sure? Do you have experience...I really would like more info.

 

[dancingbear]

I never had a room temp egg start to develop, but I never left them out on the counter more than a day or two, unless I was saving them up to hatch. I'm not sure what the lowest temp is that can trigger an egg to start to develop, but normal incubating temp is 99.5F .

 

[jhm47]

Almost all the eggs that we have eaten over the past 50+ years have been fertile. We usually store most of them in our basement, and it's around 60 degrees there. We have never had any problem with an egg developing. Occasionally when our hens quit laying due to the molt, we buy some eggs from a local farmer who keeps his Leghorn hens in cages. These hens have never even seen a rooster. We handle these eggs the same as our home-raised eggs. There has never been any difference that I could detect.

The only time that we have had a problem with an egg starting to develop was once long ago, when we had come "city" company. Their children took it upon themselves to gather eggs. As you may expect, they found a hen that was incubating eggs in an outbuilding, and took her eggs from her. Of course, they mixed these eggs with the other eggs that had been laid that day. For the next few weeks, we had some rather disgusting surprises when we opened eggs, but we survived.

In the Phillipines, the people love "balut". These are eggs that are incubated for a given number of days and then eaten. The trick is to eat the eggs just before the developing embryo forms it's down. Chinese people also consider such eggs as a delicacy.

As far as I have been able to determine, there is no difference between fertile and non-fertile eggs as to keeping time. You will likely refrigerate your eggs anyway, so what's the difference?

 

[la dee da]

jhm47, how long did you store your eggs?

Thanks for your replies

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[jhm47]

I'm not positive on this, but I'm sure we stored some of them 6-7 weeks. Possibly longer on a few of them. Never have had a problem.

 

[la dee da]

Ok, thank you