"holding" time and temp

[1momof3]

Hello everyone! My family and I are new to farming. We were hoping some one could help us answer this? How long can we "hold" an egg? And what temp do we have to keep them at? We are trying to hatch eggs now, so they will be laying in spring!

Thank you to anyone who can help!

 

[sixshooter60]

If you are refering to how long you can save eggs to go in the bator its best to not hold them over 10 days some say 7 days some say two weeks but i feel like 7 to 10 is best as the longer you hold them them more it decreases your hatch rate.. as for the temp its best to keep them at between 55 and 65 degress. i have heard some say they have hatched eggs that had been kept in the fridgs for two weeks ..i have never tried this so cant say 7 to 10 days at the above temp is the way i do it.. hope this helps

 

[1momof3]

Wonderful! Yes, that helped tremendously! Thank you for responding quickly!

 

[cmom]

I have kept eggs for up to 10 days. I have kept eggs for up to 10 days at 65 to 70 degrees before I have put them in the incubator and also on my counter in a room where the temp stayed around 80 degrees. My hatches have had the same success rate except the eggs stored at the warmer temp hatched earlier. Usually I collect the eggs I want to hatch for 3 or 4 days then put them in the incubator. The longer they set out the less viable they can become so I don't set any eggs that I have collected beyond 10 days and usually it is within 5 days. I don't handle the eggs too much. I turn on my incubator the day before I set my eggs to let the incubator stabilize. I usually candle at day 10 and again at day 18 when I take them out of the turner and set them for hatching. Good luck and have fun!!!

 

[Gypsy07]

Copy and paste this link into your browser, and open the pdf file when the option comes up:

posc.tamu.edu/library/extpublications/b6092.pdf

It's an excellent guide to incubation and hatching from the University of Texas, and it's got great info about how best to store hatching eggs to maximise their hatchability. If you're only keeping eggs up to 7 days or so, you don't need to worry too much about storage conditions as long as they're kept somewhere relatively cool and clean. Longer than 7 days storage time, how you keep them becomes more important the longer you want to store them.

As part of an experiment, I've stored eggs for over 3 weeks and had good hatch rates with them. If I wasn't running a specific experiment on egg storage, I'd be setting the freshest eggs possible, and would use eggs that were at the most 10 days old.

 

[AlienChick]

Although I've kept eggs longer than 10 days and have successully hatched, I prefer not to hold them for longer than 7-10 days.