Help create an informative post on how you ship your eggs.

[Germaine_11.20]

I have never sent eggs, but I have received them. The one item I don't care for is shredded paper. For some reason eggs often arrive broken when that is the packing material. I know it is inexpensive, but heck I will pay an extra buck to have you buy the better stuff.
I was impressed with the person who sent them in bubble wrap and then crammed the box full of quilt batting and put each egg in a little spot with more quilt batting. The eggs all made it, the air cells were intact and just about everyone developed.
Bubble wrap is good, but it is not enough. The eggs have to be kept seperate somehow.
Eggs wrapped in bubblewrap, put in egg cartons and taped up tight and then enclosed in a box that has all sides padded with "crumpled" newspaper worked too.
Pad the sides of the box.
I had one person send eggs that I swear the PO drop kicked and everyone but one made it. And goo only made it to one other egg because they had bubble wrapped each egg very well.
I really love a well packed box

 

[tristancolli]

will canadian customs allow hatching eggs to pass the boarder

 

[Pathfinders]

Quote:
Shipping eggs to Canada must be done in accordance with USDA export laws, which you can read more about here: http://www-mirror.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/animals/animal_exports.shtml

 

[Pathfinders]

I am kicking myself, as I packed some eggs yesterday and forgot to take photos. Ah well, here's a description of how I pack:

Get a 12x12x8 Priority Mail box. Fill the bottom half (not quite half) with styrofoam peanuts. Get a roll of bubble wrap and a roll of paper towel (I like the Bounty Select-A-Size as I can use the smaller sheets.)

I ship 15 eggs per box, so take off 8 pieces of bubble wrap and 8 pieces of paper towel. Cut each square of bubble warp in half lengthwise, so it's a strip about three inches wide by six inches long. Cut each piece of paper towel in half so it's a square about 3 x 3.

You can get free long and short Priority Mail labels from the USPS website, they work very well to tape up the eggs.

Place a square of paper towel on a strip of bubble wrap. Lay an egg down in it, roll it up. Tape with tape, both across and lengthwise. The paper towel allows the egg to breathe.

Lay the eggs in the box on their sides (I know some people disagree with this, but I feel it's important to distribute the force that way, rather than having them pointy side down.) Fill the box very full with the styrofoam peanuts on top. When you close the top you want there to be no room for things to shift. Tape well with Priority Mail tape.

When it comes to labels, I know there are two schools of thought. I DO NOT put anything special on my boxes of eggs. I don't want the various USPS folks to know there are hatching eggs in the box. A friend who works at a Post Office told me the best thing you can do is fly under the radar, not stand out. Packages that stand out are sometimes treated poorly, not better. So unless the buyer insists, I never put any labels that designate that eggs are inside. I don't even put FRAGILE on there.

Hope that helps. The next time I pack, I'll either take pictures and/or video tape.

Best of luck to you all with your hatches!

 

[tofuranch]

a lot of the stuff that I do has already been posted, I will post more on how I do mine later...

I just want to say one thing.....the priority label for taping shut the bubble wrap are REALLY hard to get off enough to get the eggs out. I had a hard time with some of them that I had gotten in one of the last batch of eggs that I got during shipping the labels stuck really well. Please try to use a little bit of a different tape instead...

 

[Pathfinders]

Quote:
Actually, I don't use the Priority Tape to tape the eggs shut, but Priority Labels, such as you can get for free. The website isn't working right now, but once it is I'll post a link here.

 

[tofuranch]

I am talking about the Labels, I know that they are free but they stick really well and are hard to come off to get the egg out in one piece...I would hope that people would just use a little piece of scotch tape or masking tape instead

 

[Pathfinders]

Quote:
Oh. Hmm. I've always had success using scissors to cut the whole thing off, never had an egg damaged. I would worry Scotch tape wouldn't stay on, then there'd be an egg bouncing around loose, which I prefer to avoid. I have a small, sharp pair of Friskars that works well to get eggs free of bubble wrap...

 

[Fourgirlsoneboy]

My dh works for the PO and I promise you that if the package is labled "Hatching Eggs- Fragile" they will go to great lengths to make sure your package is handled gently and delivered that day. Even our rural route postman will deliver them (and ususally he won't deliver anything that doesn't fit in our box). I can't imagine postal workers purposfully shaking a box of eggs, yk! Lol!

 

[KDbeads]

Our PO people are use to getting eggs and chicks out here. They even have a heat lamp set up for chick shipments in a corner as long as you let them know ahead of time. And in the spring, nearly every day you hear chicks! Today I picked up my hatching eggs and they had slid it in a keyed box on a piece of thick batting and left a note in my box, attached to the key, that there were eggs waiting on me and to not forget to grab them!