It occurred to me.. crazy egg idea

[Kiki]

I set the temp of the water to 125.

When I was in NPIP schooling they told us to do it this way, Also they said the egg remains viable until the center hits 117 degrees.

For the few seconds the egg is in 125 degree water I doubt the center even warms a degree,

Some eggs are just too dirty and filthy to set, that is a fact of life. Those get cleaned harder and eaten.. I know sad, we eat something that I won't set.

What is this NPIP schooling?
Was it actual classes you took or is this just the learning process for one to become NPIP certified?

(curious)

 

[duluthralphie]

What is this NPIP schooling?
Was it actual classes you took or is this just the learning process for one to become NPIP certified?

(curious)

In Minnesota we have to take a class to learn the rules, dos and don'ts. The state paperwork and the USDA stuff. They also put us through a day of learning to test birds and what we are looking for.

The go over the basics, that some of us never did, like disinfecting eggs.


They have a written test you have to pass, but it is pretty easy. Some time later then come out and inspect your place and make you test your own birds under their supervision. Once that is over you get a card with your Flock Number, and NPIP number and a different one saying your a "certified Poultry Tester'. Then you cab test for others, 4h and stuff like that.

It's not like its college course or anything, they just call it NPIP school.

 

[yellowherb]

I set the temp of the water to 125.

When I was in NPIP schooling they told us to do it this way, Also they said the egg remains viable until the center hits 117 degrees.

For the few seconds the egg is in 125 degree water I doubt the center even warms a degree,

Some eggs are just too dirty and filthy to set, that is a fact of life. Those get cleaned harder and eaten.. I know sad, we eat something that I won't set.

Haha! Sad for me is that I set every single egg my girls laid and bought store bought eggs to feed to my family AND chickens and other birds.

 

[yellowherb]

1st shipped egg just hatched. I forgot to write the set date on them and did not expect hatching until this weekend for some reason.

So first out is a wrapped mille fleur (small) egg from TJChickens. Several others from both wrapped and unwrapped have external pips.

I was hoping to be back in my home made incubator by this stage but unfortunately the parts have not shown up yet and I'm now scrambling to figure out how to hatch in my Chinese bator while still having some younger eggs set.

 

[yellowherb]

TJChickens Eggs:
Well, turns out the humidity gauge was off on the Chinese incubator and I kept dumping water in, over and over and over. Pretty sure I killed/drowned a few chicks so the results are off.

So far I have 7 hatched chicks.

Breakdown:
5 wrapped eggs
6 unwrapped eggs.

Out of those:
1 unwrapped was a mid death in shell
1 unwrapped was a late DIS

Leaving 1 wrapped and 1 nonwrapped still in the incubator. I just pulled a wet chick out so the eggs could still hatch...maybe.

4 wrapped eggs have hatched out of 5 set
3 nonwrapped eggs hatched out of 6 set

I'm still happy with the final results but I think if I had not messed up the humidity the hatch rate would have been higher. Pretty sure I could have hatched 9 out of 11 without the humidity issue. 9/11 for shipped eggs is a great hatch. 7/11 is still a very decent hatch for shipped eggs.

I did have 2 chicks which pipped upside down. 1 of each set of eggs. The wrapped egg upside down chick got out eventually on his own. I helped widen the pip on the nonwrapped egg when I seen the chick was struggling. He managed to get out from there. And one chick has a kinked neck. So basically it's shipped eggs and things that can happen to the chicks due to shipping stress and air cell wonkiness in my opinion.

TJChickens sent me a assortment of egg sizes as requested. Only 2 were large eggs and 1 of those is still waiting to see if it hatches. It was a wrapped large egg if that makes any difference. There is also a small unwrapped bantam egg waiting to see if it hatches. The smaller eggs have shown to have a overall higher hatch rate, but as I only set 2 large eggs it was 50/50. Tantor's eggs are all xlarge to jumbo so we'll see how size plays on those.


tantors eggs:
1 non wrapped was discarded early due to blood ring.

I smell a bad egg but can't find it yet. Tantor's eggs are medium brown and hard for me to see thru. I'm going to end up having to do the "sniff" test ughh. This involves me sticking the eggs to my nostrils and taking a big whiff, not at all pleasant.

The eggs should start hatching this weekend and meanwhile I am going to try to get my humidity under control!


I'll probably try this experiment again further down the road when my real incubator is back in good working order. The results will be more stable since these eggs were allowed to chill down some when my bator died on me and I can not say with any certainty that the results would have been the same if they went start to finish in the same conditions as they started out in.

 

[TJChickens]

 

[yellowherb]

Well things did not go well. I was bummed and kicking myself. Sorry about not having updated sooner.

The extreme humidity was a factor in Tantor's eggs. I only managed to hatch 1.

Good news is that some of my chickens are showing interest in laying. So I'll have serama pullet eggs to play with soon. They are the size of a really large quail egg, so I'll have to think of some fitting experiments. I'm still waiting on their fertility to get a bit higher than it's tested at so far.

so tiny and cute

 

[wynn4578]

Interesting read. Im curious if someone shrink wrapped an egg (kind of like the egglands eggs used to come or think Easter egg wraps) if you would get the same results. The ends would be open though so not sure if they would slow down evaporation or have any effect whatsoever. My incubator recently took a lightening charge and is waiting on parts but this would be interesting to try. I also use a homemade egg keeper that keeps them at 56f and turns them so I would be curious if doing this how long I could keep an egg and still get a hatch.

 

[yellowherb]

Interesting read. Im curious if someone shrink wrapped an egg (kind of like the egglands eggs used to come or think Easter egg wraps) if you would get the same results. The ends would be open though so not sure if they would slow down evaporation or have any effect whatsoever. My incubator recently took a lightening charge and is waiting on parts but this would be interesting to try. I also use a homemade egg keeper that keeps them at 56f and turns them so I would be curious if doing this how long I could keep an egg and still get a hatch.

I never bothered to lower the temperature I held them at. They sat on a table at about 73F. I may have remembered to turn them every 2 or 3 days. The longest I held one that was bagged was 12 days. I think they could go longer. Seems to me that the reason we are taught to hold them at lower temperatures is to decrease the evaporation rate.

I thought about using a food saver to shrink wrap and seal but those bags are expensive haha.

It would be interesting to see just how long you can hold a egg and get a decent hatch rate from it.

 

[wynn4578]

I never bothered to lower the temperature I held them at. They sat on a table at about 73F. I may have remembered to turn them every 2 or 3 days. The longest I held one that was bagged was 12 days. I think they could go longer. Seems to me that the reason we are taught to hold them at lower temperatures is to decrease the evaporation rate.

I thought about using a food saver to shrink wrap and seal but those bags are expensive haha.

It would be interesting to see just how long you can hold a egg and get a decent hatch rate from it.

I wouldn't want to receive eggs that old. But it would be interesting to see how long I could hold a few of my own. Some things I would be interested in checking would be -hatchability - chick strength at hatch - hatch weight - how well the chicks gain or grow compared to a control group - and overall bird quality thru the first year compared to the control. Seems like slot to keep track of but definitely things to consider. There wouldn't be much point in hatching an older egg if bird quality were compromised.