I received 18 chicken eggs from ebay yesterday in the morning. I set them late last night. They were from only 2 hours away from my location and seem to have handled the shipment well. It was a mix of breeds. The seller says they have black copper marans, ayam cemani, silver and golden laced wyandottes, light brahmas, buff brahmas, bielefelders, pavlovskaya, easter eggers, olive eggers, cream legbars, cuckoo bluebars, barred rock, delawares, salmon favorelle, black sex links, australorps, black silkies, and mixes of those breeds. I am thrilled because the only breeds among those I already have are barred rocks and easter eggers, and many of those breeds are ones I've not had in the past either.
I haven't had the best of luck with shipped eggs before, but I'm trying a Hovabator incubator instead of just a random cheap plastic incubator I found online, which I have used in the past on shipped and fresh eggs from my own birds and had so-so luck both times, even though my own hens usually have a 100% hatch rate with our own eggs. So I'm guessing the incubator is one of the main issues, besides for them just being tough because they've been shipped.
Anyway, here are my eggs when I was letting them lay out to try and fix the air cells. I can tell which eggs are Easter Eggers, but does anyone have any guesses among the breeds I listed as to what some of the other eggs I have may be? I am not the best at telling which breeds of eggs are which. Even among my own chickens, I can tell my two easter eggers apart, the one white leghorn apart, and... yeah, all the brown ones are the same to me
10 and 16 look similar to my bielefelder's eggs, dark brown with even darker brown spots
Thanks! It's hard to candle and take pics at the same time in the dark! I only gave her 5 eggs, all 5 show development. I have only candled once so far. I have never hatched before but find one egg questionable because it is not quite like the others. I also wonder if it's the one that got kicked out of the nest one day when it was below freezing out and could be almost a day behind in development, or maybe an early quitter. My other girls of course now want to lay in the nest box that the broody is in even though no one had laid an egg in that box in almost a year. I have not done anything to separate her at this point but I think I might have to make some sort of barrier or something out of cardboard when it gets closer to hatch day. I do have a hatch thread going here...
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ching-in-28-days.1311333/page-6#post-21401150
My one Buff Orpington girl died, so I set the last 6 eggs of her. Only 4 were fertile, so I hope hope hope! they'll all make it and that there's at least one girl in there.
