I am in need of suggestions on how to keep my eggs warm until I get the chance to gather them. They cannot get cold because I want to incubate these eggs but because of a busy schedule I can't check the box every hour for eggs help me please!
You could always line the bottoms of your nest boxes with regular old heating pads (the kind humans use), under a few inches of straw (although straw can harbor mites, it's a good insulator because of the hollow stalks)...
You best efforts will still be rewarded with some frozen eggs. My wife uses them for cooking. April seems to solve your problems. Granted it is the exception NOT the rule but Muscovy duck eggs have hatch that were frozen and cracked. Something like this heater tape may help. You would have to wrap it to suit your particular application if it is viable for your set up. It is available at Home Depot in Canada. It is thermostatically controlled to come on at or near the freezing point.
I would post a new thread titled 'gathering eggs in the winter for incubation' in the Incubating and Hatching forum..not sure how cold the eggs can get if you want to incubate them. A reptile heating pad might be safer than a human heating pad, anytime you mix straw/hay/shavings and electricity it can be very risky...please be careful.
I am in North Minnesota and use a roll out box design with the eggs resting on a heat pad that I use in the spring to start seeds. Cost about $15 and works great.
Not sure of your location, but just an FYI, your eggs CAN get cold before you gather them. In nature (and in coops around the country), hens lay one egg a day until they have enough, THEN they sit on them and heat them. MANY people have good luck hatching eggs that have been sitting in fridges for several days. As long as your eggs don't completely freeze, you should be fine. As an FYI, an egg has to reach an INTERNAL temperature of 28*F before ice crystals can form, THIS is going to be the magic number where you start to get "egg deaths" due to cold.
Thank you for giving me that information! I never really knew how cold eggs could get and still have some success with hatching. I just assumed that if they get below freezing they're goners. Trying to gather eggs right now is just not going to happen, considering that it has been extremely cold here in Illinois, I will just have to wait until it begins to warm up. I need spring!!!
Thanks, saraswank! I didn't know eggs could get down to 28* internally and still hatch...since we don't usually get that cold in this part of La. I could probably hatch all winter with no electricity in my hen house! Yay! I will try it out
