Help!!! Refrigerator accident!

[MadelynESheppard]

Ok so my family has been horribly sick for about a week. I still am sick and my 16 year old was trying to help me out and cleaned the house for me. My friend had dropped off some eggs for me to incubate and she didn't realize it and put them in the fridge! :s I've heard different things about this tho. They were in the fridge for 10-11 hours. Will that amount of time mess with the hatch rate? And do I need to let them sit at room temperature for a few days b4 I start to incubate them or am I good to go whenever?

 

[Purelychicks]

Ok so my family has been horribly sick for about a week. I still am sick and my 16 year old was trying to help me out and cleaned the house for me. My friend had dropped off some eggs for me to incubate and she didn't realize it and put them in the fridge! :s I've heard different things about this tho. They were in the fridge for 10-11 hours. Will that amount of time mess with the hatch rate? And do I need to let them sit at room temperature for a few days b4 I start to incubate them or am I good to go whenever?

I’ve heard refrigerating eggs hatched more hens, but it’s probably just a myth. Also I would probably let them go room temp, but I don’t think it matters.

 

[SilverBirds]

Some people have had good experiences hatching refrigerated eggs, others haven't. I would still go for it and hope for the best. Let them sit for around 12hrs so they can warm up to room temp before incubating.

 

[BarnyardChaos]

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.