How long can I collect duck eggs for incubating before the first ones are bad? I get 2 eggs a day from my 2 girls and would like to collect as many eggs as possible before incubating.
Most people collect for a week but you can for up to about 14 days then after that you start losing fertility as fast as your getting more eggs.
The viability of the eggs will decrease over time. Most references I see about this state that holding for longer than a week can start negatively affecting the hatch rate. Holding the eggs at a cool temperature....roughly in the 55-60F degree...helps to prolong their viability, whereas I seem to recall that simply refrigerating (35-40F) them supposedly is counterproductive. I've seen it stated that a high humidity level (as high as 75%) is recommended for the storage period. Be gentle with them, store them big end up, tilt them back or forth each day. There are many reports of people hatching Trader Joe eggs, etc., and it's pretty safe to say that these eggs are older than what most of us would save to incubate. But...most of the hatch rates reported are not that high...but for a buck or three nobody's complaining. Having said all of this, I'm a rank newbie, but have researched the stew out of incubating and chickens....probably could be hired as head of NASA if I had been studying astrophysics and then I could *really* mess something up!!!! Bottom line is if it were me I'd go probably 8-10 days and start incubating...a trade-off between peak viability and peak quantity. Best wishes with your project, Ed
Not duck eggs but I have collected up to 3 weeks here with my chickens and had 99% hatch rate. So give it a go you can always toss the not developing eggs if you have some.
