hatching eggs

[stake]

All:
Hoping to have my coolerbater up and running by the weekend....I have some eggs I started to collect on Sunday and Monday sitting on my dining room table....how long can an egg sit (at room temps, 62-68) before they are not good to incubate? TIA!!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

How fast can you drive on a road? It depends on the road and the conditions. Exceeding the recommended speed does not guarantee an accident, it just makes one more likely. How long can you store an egg at room temperatures (yours look low which is good, by the way). It depends on the egg and the conditions.

First I suggest you read this. It’s got a pretty good section on how to store the eggs. But don’t stress over any of that except pointy side down. That’s important. This article gives the ideal conditions. Most of us don’t have “ideal” conditions. I have the conditions “I deal” with. As long as you are reasonably close to those you’ll be OK. Just do the best you reasonably can. That article gives you things to consider.

Texas A&M Incubation site
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/...e-Cartwright-Incubating-and-hatching-eggs.pdf

All eggs don’t automatically go bad at exactly 9 days 23 hours and five minutes. What happens is that hatchability drops the longer they are stored and the further from the ideal conditions you are. Hatchability means you go from an 85% chance of hatching that specific egg to maybe 80%, something like that. It doesn’t automatically go from 100% to 0%.

Not all eggs are the same either. Some may have thinner shells, more porosity, or thinner whites. Those will dry out faster than a different egg. The answer will be different for each egg.

With all that said, you can normally store an egg in not tremendously great conditions for a week without even turning it and hatchability remains pretty high. If you are going to try to store them longer than a week you need to control your conditions better.

I normally store mine in the automatic egg turner in a spare bedroom for five to seven days. It’s not great conditions but it is the best I can reasonably do. Some people in hot climates without air conditioning store theirs in a warmer part of their refrigerator. It’s not ideal but it’s the best they can reasonably do. Although that is a big no-no, they often get pretty good hatches.