How long can fertilized eggs sit?

[chickensnewtome]

How long can fertilized Guinea eggs sit at room temperature before incubation?

 

[KrisH]

The longer you have them sit, the lower the chances of survival, a week is best, but we have had success with 20 day old eggs on the counter without turning. Brinsea recomended keeping eggs chilled, and turning while waiting to hatch. We did that with our last batch of turkeys and 40 of 41 hatched. We have always had trouble hatching turkeys before.

RobertH

 

[chickensnewtome]

Awesome thank you. These are 3 wk old Guniea eggs that some lady left at the feed store. We shall see what happens. We are putting them on tonight and if 9 out of the 18 hatch I will be happy.

 

[PeepsCA]

Guinea eggs can start to develop at 70 degrees... so you really should not store them at room temp for more than a couple days. Too much development at low temps may end up resulting in a bad hatch/messed up keets. Storing the eggs at 55 degrees with a decent amount of humidity, and turning the eggs a few time a day is the best way to store Guinea eggs before incubating them (IME), but not always possible. After 10 days, even in perfect storage conditions the viability starts to decline pretty quickly tho. That being said, I have hatched eggs as old as 16 days old before... and a Hen will sit on a clutch of 20+ eggs that have been sitting in a nest in a depression in the ground and she'll usually hatch out most of them. Keeping them cool and turning them frequently is crucial to maintaining viability.

I have never tried chilling my eggs (of any kind) below 55 degrees (didn't want to risk it)... but I have read quite a few posts about refrigerated eggs hatching out just fine.

 

[KrisH]

check out section 2.3 of the attached document (Bottom of Page 4) "Storage and handling of eggs"

http://www.brinsea.com/pdffiles/Brinsea_Handbook.pdf

RobertH

Basically says what Peeps says, just more datail