Good Candidates for Hatching Eggs

[Takemine77]

I was hoping someone could give me some clues to what makes an egg a good candidate for the incubator. My second batch for this spring hatched this weekend. I know which eggs come from which hens, and was disappointed to see that none of my Golden Sexlinks, Hamburg, or Wyandotte's hatched. When I candled them early in the incubation, I noticed that the Sexlinks eggs were very porous.

There are 12 hens to 1 rooster, so shouldn't be any problems there. Most of the hens are 1 year old, with the exception of the Golden Sexlink, Hamburg, and Rhode Island Red(3-4 of the Rhode Island Red babies hatched!).

Are there physical indicators of fertility that I can take note of before putting the eggs in the incubator? If they aren't fertile, I'd be happier eating them

 

[AmyLynn2374]

I was hoping someone could give me some clues to what makes an egg a good candidate for the incubator. My second batch for this spring hatched this weekend. I know which eggs come from which hens, and was disappointed to see that none of my Golden Sexlinks, Hamburg, or Wyandotte's hatched. When I candled them early in the incubation, I noticed that the Sexlinks eggs were very porous.

There are 12 hens to 1 rooster, so shouldn't be any problems there. Most of the hens are 1 year old, with the exception of the Golden Sexlink, Hamburg, and Rhode Island Red(3-4 of the Rhode Island Red babies hatched!).

Are there physical indicators of fertility that I can take note of before putting the eggs in the incubator? If they aren't fertile, I'd be happier eating them

The only way to tell if an egg is fertile is to crack a couple from the hen in question and look for the bullseye. (Then you can havebreakfast.

)
Here's a pic to help if you aren't sure what you are looking for:

 

[JoshFig]

I was hoping someone could give me some clues to what makes an egg a good candidate for the incubator. My second batch for this spring hatched this weekend. I know which eggs come from which hens, and was disappointed to see that none of my Golden Sexlinks, Hamburg, or Wyandotte's hatched. When I candled them early in the incubation, I noticed that the Sexlinks eggs were very porous.

There are 12 hens to 1 rooster, so shouldn't be any problems there. Most of the hens are 1 year old, with the exception of the Golden Sexlink, Hamburg, and Rhode Island Red(3-4 of the Rhode Island Red babies hatched!).

Are there physical indicators of fertility that I can take note of before putting the eggs in the incubator? If they aren't fertile, I'd be happier eating them

I've found you can filter out a lot of bad eggs by candling them. I look for hairline cracks on the ends as well as porous - I find only half to 2/3rd of my eggs are good for hatching. Once I started filtering those out I had much higher hit rates on development. The other thing to pull out is eggs that are really large or funny shapes (bumps, etc...). I had one hen that laid giant eggs (white leghorn) - her eggs would develop to a week and a half and die - every time. I just stopped incubating her eggs. Some hens just don't lay good eggs for hatching.

1 rooster to 12 hens should be fine. Just check your eggs when you eat them to see what % are fertile (per what AmyLynn2374 posted).