Please Help With Egg Size For Incubator.

[BarredR]

I'm have six Barred Rock pullets laying medium to extra large eggs but mostly medium. My first incubator should arrive fed ex tomorrow and I wanted to hatch a small test batch after setting up and getting it dialed in. I know extra large eggs are ideal for hatching but can you incubate Large eggs or is that asking for bad results? The egg in question is 57g so barely a large egg?

 

[Ridgerunner]

The best eggs to incubate are the ones that are average size for the chicken. Avoid really small or really large eggs.

if you are trying to increase the size of egg your flock lays, select eggs from the hens that lay the largest eggs, not just a random large egg. You need the genetics from the hens that regularly lay larger eggs.

 

[BarredR]

So in other words Barred Rocks are known for laying extra large brown eggs so that's all I should put in the incubator? And if they are not laying extra large eggs yet I should wait tell they are?

 

[Ridgerunner]

What I’m talking about is if a hen normally lays an egg that is around 49 grams, hatch her eggs that are in that size range. If she lays a 40 gram egg or a 58 gram egg and then goes back to the 49 gram size, don’t try to hatch those weird sized eggs. If her normal size is 65 grams, hatch eggs that size.

As you probably know, pullets start off small and their eggs gradually get larger. You can hatch those smaller pullet eggs. I have and I get decent hatch rates. Often the hatch rate is not quite as good as eggs from hens that have been laying longer but I have gotten pretty good hatch rates from pullet eggs.

Normally if I hatch chicks they don’t die. On the rare occasions one does die, it was usually hatched from a pullet egg. They are just not as big, strong, and robust as chicks from eggs from older hens. That doesn’t mean you can’t raise them. You can. It’s just that they may be a bit harder to raise.

Those eggs sound pretty good for a test hatch. They sound like the pullets have been laying for a while otherwise they shouldn’t be quite that big. Your success may not be quite as good as you’ll get later but you will probably do OK.

Good luck!

 

[BarredR]

Ok I get what your saying. Most of my pullets are laying around 59g eggs that are medium in size but one pullet is laying 63g-64g eggs on a regular witch is average size I believe for a Barred Rock hen. I was concerned because I read that you can't hatch smaller eggs from pullets and I don't get many larger eggs yet but thanks for your knowledge.