Hatch Grocery store eggs (Happy Egg Heritage brand)

[JacinLarkwell]

I had a commercial chicken farmer tell me that pastured commercial eggs might be fertile because of "oops roosters", that may be left with the flock because it's too much trouble to try to sort them out if they're not causing problems.

He's a meat bird farmer, but presumably knows something about what other commercial chicken farmers do.

No guarantees.

I could see the logic in that. Egg birds go for cheaper fill meat at 18 months or so, so depending on the feed costs, it might be less expensive to feed an oops rooster than to pay somone to go out and find it

 

[Ridgerunner]

Another possible source of fertile commercial eggs are the breeding flocks. I'm not necessarily talking so much about the hatcheries we use but the hatcheries that provide hatching eggs for commercial layers and maybe even meat birds. They are all going to have excess eggs. I think the hatcheries we use would sell to people that crack the eggs like bakeries or dog food manufacturers because of the varying color of egg shells. The hatcheries for the commercial birds that might hatch as many as 1,000,000 chicks a week are going to be producing a lot of eggs and they don't have varying egg shell colors. They are going to sell the excess somewhere and eggs that go into cartons are worth more than eggs that go into a cake. I don't have any knowledge that any do sell them this way, that's why I said a possible source.

The vast majority of eggs from the supermarket that come from major brand suppliers are not going to be fertile and they are not handled in a way to prepare them for hatching but it is possible you could get one.

 

[NatJ]

I had a commercial chicken farmer tell me that pastured commercial eggs might be fertile because of "oops roosters", that may be left with the flock because it's too much trouble to try to sort them out if they're not causing problems.

I've wondered about that myself.

I would expect caged layers to have a very low rate of fertile eggs, because an oops rooster would only be able to mate with the hens in his own cage. But if they are housed loose in a building, or on pasture, a single rooster could mate with quite a few of the hens.

If hatcheries guarantee 90% accuracy on sexed chicks, that could mean up to 10% males. And 10% roosters in a flock is a common number for good ferility, so that many oops roosters could cause all eggs in a given flock to be fertile. (Although I think that 10% roosters would eat enough feed that it would be worth sending someone with a flashlight after dark to grab at least most of them. So they are unlikely to actually be at that level for long.)

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

 

[3KillerBs]

I'm not necessarily talking so much about the hatcheries we use but the hatcheries that provide hatching eggs for commercial layers and maybe even meat birds.

A while back, during my time between flocks, our neighbor at the time worked with a guy whose brother worked at one of the meat bird hatcheries in the area.

When the newly-laying pullets in the commercial flocks were producing double-yolked eggs as they started up the employees were allowed to take them home. Our neighbor shared with us and those things were just insane. Double and triple yolkers twice the size of an XL.

 

[Kool-Kemp]

The company website says they buy eggs from local small farms, so no commercial farm with millions of hens as you guessed above, which I think why the eggs are fertile. Small local farmers may not care much if they have a rooster or two (or three or ten ) in their free-roam pasture flock.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I had a commercial chicken farmer tell me that pastured commercial eggs might be fertile because of "oops roosters", that may be left with the flock because it's too much trouble to try to sort them out if they're not causing problems.

He's a meat bird farmer, but presumably knows something about what other commercial chicken farmers do.

No guarantees.

I could see the logic in that. Egg birds go for cheaper fill meat at 18 months or so, so depending on the feed costs, it might be less expensive to feed an oops rooster than to pay somone to go out and find it

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

Any luck?

 

[Kool-Kemp]

Any luck?

We are at day 8, too early to tell. But the one I cracked was obviously fertile.

 

[CardinalCreekFarm]

I'm interested to see what happens with yours. I bought a dozen today to incubate as an experiment as well.