Like practically everything to do with chickens you’ll get different opinions on this. I can’t prove one thing or another on this, but I’ll give you my opinion. I’ve had lousy hatch rates with shipped eggs and I’ve had one 100% hatch rate with shipped eggs, 5 out of 5 turkey eggs. I let them set pointy side down overnight and in the incubator with the automatic turner they went.
There is a difference in what might possibly happen and what will happen 100% or the time without fail. Practically everything we talk about is a “might possibly” not an absolute certainty.
It’s important that an egg be turned early in incubation. That’s when the body parts are forming. Turning helps keep the eyes outside the skull and not on the same side of the face. It’s pretty important for the internal organs to form in the right place. That helps them hook up the plumbing correctly. It helps a membrane form around the developing chick so the chick won’t stick to the side of the shell when it comes into contact with the shell, which it will when it gets too big to avoid the shell. I consider turning important.
When they are in an automatic turner, they are very gently turned and the fat side is always kept up high. If instead of incubating them pointy side down you lay them flat on the bottom of the incubator and roll them, which is also a way to turn them, you don’t have such a clear definition of fat side up. That might make a difference.
Maybe letting them set without turning during the first four or five days will improve hatch rate. Maybe not turning them the first four of five days while body parts are forming will not hurt them. I can’t tell you either way. But mine go in the turner in the incubator the day after I get them.
