How long can you wait before putting eggs into the bator?

[TheDuckCrew]

I have one pekin hen and want to hatch some eggs, but she only lays one a day. she has a nest full of five or six but she doesn't sit on them. How long could they stay before being put in the bator and still be viable?

 

[SpunkyChicken]

I've read not to incubate eggs that are older than 15 days old, so it should be fine to collect a dozen before incubating if your hen only lays one egg a day. We always kept our duck eggs in a cool dark place before we had enough to incubate them.

 

[gabrielle1976]

most people say 7 days for best fertility but you can do 10-14 but have decreased fertility .
I think if you went and got them then put them in the bator tonight as long as nothing happend to them out there they should be fine.

 

[B. Saffles Farms]

7 to 10 days in the oldest for me, 99% of the time they arent older than 7 days. But I have heard of people hatching eggs that where much older, and having decent hatches.

 

[SpunkyChicken]

Quote:
Yeah my reasoning is, in this specific case with one egg-layer, you're going to have 7 eggs from the last 7 days anyway, so you might as well throw in the eggs from the earlier days as well. In other words if your hen lays 1 egg a day, and you collect each egg until you have 15, 7 of those eggs are still going to be less than a week old. You've really got nothing to lose by trying to incubate the other 8 eggs!

 

[Mahonri]

No one asked. Do you have a roo?

 

[gabrielle1976]

They have a point there..

Do you have a Drake?

 

[B. Saffles Farms]

Quote:
Yeah my reasoning is, in this specific case with one egg-layer, you're going to have 7 eggs from the last 7 days anyway, so you might as well throw in the eggs from the earlier days as well. In other words if your hen lays 1 egg a day, and you collect each egg until you have 15, 7 of those eggs are still going to be less than a week old. You've really got nothing to lose by trying to incubate the other 8 eggs!

Yep you have nothing to lose, so if it was me Id go for it. Who knows more may hatch than you think was possible.

 

[TheDuckCrew]

I have 3 drakes. (yeah, we're working on the whole "girl out numbered" thing. we didn't know their sex when we got them, and we just love them too much to get rid of any). but hopefully my parents will let me build a bator and put the eggs in!