I've just read some info today from Hubbard, about several studies done on storing eggs and the effects of temperature and length of time in storage.
It was pretty technical concerning CO2 and Ph levels, albumen density, gaseous exchange, embryonic development during storage, and more gobbledegook - I didn't understand it all - but the gist of it is that the embryo goes through an important stage of development in the first few days after being laid and before incubation begins. (Think of a mother hen, who lays one egg every day or so, up and down off the nest, warming and cooling the eggs, until she has the number she wants - THEN she starts to really sit the eggs.)
I gathered that it's actually beneficial to let them sit in storage at room temperature for up to 4 days before incubation. It doesn't seem that refrigeration affected anything; it just stopped the process of that embryonic development until they reached a certain ambient temperature again, and then it restarted.
In other words.....
I doubt that the refrigeration hurt anything at all. I'd let them rest for a couple of days at room temperature before incubating. In my own experience, I've incubated eggs that were under refrigeration for a few days, with no difference in hatch rate vs. un-refrigerated eggs.
