Incubating Mailed Quail Eggs 1st Time

[briecardosa]

My boyfriend bought me an incubator for my birthday.

I ordered 24 Coturnix eggs from a seller in Texas to be shipped to California about a month ago.

Due to everything that's going on, the seller let me know that the eggs would be very delayed. I was checking my mail and email daily for tracking info but I must have missed it and I just discovered that the eggs were sitting in my mailbox for two days.

Out of 24 eggs, I have 16 that were not cracked during shipping and while the remaining eggs are not visibly damaged or dirty, Im concerned that they are possibly bad from being in the mail box or sitting in with rotting broken eggs.

I have not had a chance to use or test my incubator and I'm just feeling really overwhelmed and disappointed that I didn't have a chance to research this enough before they arrived and that so many were damaged and sitting in the mail box since the evening of the 22nd.

Should I still try to incubate them?
Should I wash them?

 

[briecardosa]

I sprayed the eggs with a 50/50 Listerine and water mixture and I did the float test with room temp water and they were all good. Any other tips would help!

 

[muddy75]

Not a big fan of float testing although it should be fine this early......join the quail hatch a long thread for help and guidance on quail hatching! Get your incubator set, calibrated and use this as a test hatch.....theoretically you could/should get 50% hatch rate on undamaged eggs.....if you don’t, don’t get discouraged! Myshire farm is my “go to” for quail eggs.....they actually offer a 50% hatch rate guarantee and will help you tooo! They actually average closer to 75% hatch rate on eggs shipped all over!!!

 

[007Sean]

My boyfriend bought me an incubator for my birthday.

I ordered 24 Coturnix eggs from a seller in Texas to be shipped to California about a month ago.

Due to everything that's going on, the seller let me know that the eggs would be very delayed. I was checking my mail and email daily for tracking info but I must have missed it and I just discovered that the eggs were sitting in my mailbox for two days.

Out of 24 eggs, I have 16 that were not cracked during shipping and while the remaining eggs are not visibly damaged or dirty, Im concerned that they are possibly bad from being in the mail box or sitting in with rotting broken eggs.

I have not had a chance to use or test my incubator and I'm just feeling really overwhelmed and disappointed that I didn't have a chance to research this enough before they arrived and that so many were damaged and sitting in the mail box since the evening of the 22nd.

Should I still try to incubate them?
Should I wash them?

I'm not big on washing or float testing, both will take the 'bloom' off of the eggs. Doing that can allow bacteria an easy access into the egg.

Depending on your temperature at your location, sitting for 2 days shouldn't hurt the embryos, unless it was hot enough to start the eggs developing.
As soon as you can get the incubator up to temp and stabilized, I would set the eggs.