Mailing hatching eggs- the secret?

[pasofinofarm]

I will trust our mods that if this is not in the best place for this post they will send it off where it would be of more help.

I had an interesting conversation with a lady who works in the central post office wharehouse here in Houston yesterday. She said that all priority mail whether marked fragile or not is handled by a machine which dumps all the boxes into a hopper then on an assembly line and then sorts by zip code and dumps into more hoppers. So a box of eggs may have a 50 pound box of something come falling from pretty great height right down on to it. I never knew that the process was so brutal. Evidently the only way to avoid this and get special handling is to mark the box "LIVE" this is how they handle baby chicks, catapillar cocoons, crickets and other live things in the mail. From now on we will be marking all of our hatching eggs as "LIVE HATCHING EGG EMBRYOS".

I shared this with someone who just got a batch of eggs from me that had a lot of ruptured air cells (as have several batches of eggs he got elsewhere) and he said he got eggs in Jan. marked 'live embryos' that did not have any... So... maybe this piece of info will help someone to have a better hatch.

 

[hooksetz]

That makes sense, but are we then having to pay that new air freight charge like the hatcheries are hitting us with? How much more does it cost on average to ship like that?

 

[Ms. Lewis Rich]

Thanks , good to know. I just got Serama eggs and 80 per cent had ruptured air sacs,
I also have in the past got a box that looked like a really fat employee had sat on it!

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Hi! Marking the box "EGGS FOR HATCHING ENCLOSED" seems to work well.

Good luck!

Lisa

 

[Chicky Tocks]

Here is what the USPS says about it.

http://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/extraservices/specialhandlingservice.htm

 

[pasofinofarm]

Dipsy we have been marking our boxes 'Hatching Eggs' for years... When we started getting so many with ruptured air cells we stopped marking them at all.

The lady that actually WORKS there and HANDLES the mail says exactly what I thought... it makes no difference! Machines not people handle everything but 'live' which goes to a totaly seperate unit for human handling. She told me that they actualy pet the little chicks through the holes in the boxes.... Now those are the kind of folks I want handling my eggs... Not some monster machine who sees my eggs the same was it sees a load of hard cover book and just dumps them in the hopper!

 

[EweSheep]

Good info, Paso!

I am afraid to label my box because the employees like to drop kick boxes that labelled like that.

Either way it is going to get banged up at all channels.

 

[tberggren]

Quote:
So then would you suggest that we mark "LIVE Chicken Embryo's" on the box and then they will be handled by a person and not the machine??

 

[Harley's girl]

WOW! Thanks so much! I am about to box up some eggs now!! Thanks!

 

[PamsPride]

I was talking to my post lady and she said she sees the driver pick up the priority bag and fling it up into the truck on a regular basis!! Sigh....