How long can my eggs sit on a egg turner until the eggs are not good for hatching anymore?

[CrazyChickensEverwhere]

I have been collecting my flocked eggs for 4 days, and I am keeping th eggs in a cool room on a egg turner, how long can I hold off until they have to go into the incubator?

 

[buttercup0884]

theoretically its supposed to be 10 days...however Bhep (on the NC thread) did an experiment and set eggs she had on the counter for 22 days and all but 2 of them hatched (it was like 33 eggs i think)

I am setting eggs today that are 10 days old

hope that helps

 

[CrazyChickensEverwhere]

Oh ok, Thank you!

 

[Arielle]

I have a book on hatching from the Strombergs, and shows the ever decreasing percentage of hatch the older the eggs are. Basically this is why 7 days are prefered but 10 or 14 are also given.

Bhep's numbers reflect a specific flock: breed, feeding, counter conditions. A very interesting experiment. Shows how well some eggs can hold.

 

[Ilovemyduckies]

You can store them up to 10 days. Good luck with your hatch

 

[Ridgerunner]

Just like almost everything else with chickens, it depends. The conditions of the parents, health, nutrition, genetics, will all enter in. A really big contributing factor is how you store them. If you store them in a relatively humid place that is pretty cool and you turn them regularly, two weeks is not anywhere out of reason. You can even go longer with some eggs if the storage conditions are pretty good. There are a lot of people on this forum that have experienced that.

It is not a case of the eggs instantaneously going from hatching to not hatching at a specific age. The longer you store them and the worst conditions you store them in, the less likely they are to hatch. So I suggest you store them in the best conditions you can for as short a time as you can. If you do that you have taken reasonable precautions and done the best you can.

I'll give you a link to an article that talks about storing eggs for incubation, but I don't meet all that criteria. I just do the best I can.

Texas A&M Incubation site
http://gallus.tamu.edu/library/extpublications/b6092.pdf