Porous Egg Experiment!! THEY ARE HATCHING 2/23

[sonew123]

Quote:
I tend to keep humidity a bit higher for porous eggs. I have a bator filled with expensive eggs right now-alot are porous-so Ive upped humidity to about 45% day 1-18 ( instead of 35-40%) then higher of course for lockdown...

 

[gitlost80]

Mine were 75 bucks for the 12 of them, and they are really porous. I hope a few make it. They are on day 3, I have the humidity higher. I am hovering over them, all day, everyday until they hatch!

 

[kittydoc]

Porous eggs + shipping is indeed a very bad combination. I had my one and only zero hatch rate in that scenario.

However, I have had very poor results with stored porous eggs in my own home as well. It's not my chiller--it's kept right around 50 degrees. However, besides the potential for premature dehydration that the extra porosity allows, it also permits more bacteria to contaminate the eggs and result in early death of the embryos. My first dozen eggs set from a porous color/breed only has given me two eggs that look like they are going to hatch (I hear one that has internally pipped today, and the other is actually due a couple of days later).

I stopped storing them, and have been setting the "least porous" eggs as available (which might all be from the same hen), and so far have had fewer clears, but it's still early. This experiment will continue throughout the season.

Other color/breed eggs from pullets the same age, fed the same diet, hatch at 100%, even after storage for up to a week. They have probably 80% fewer pores than the troublesome ones. A little porosity is normal. A LOT may be normal for the hen, but it's not good for reproduction. You'd think the hens producing porous eggs would be culled out of existence just by their eggs not hatching well, but apparently enough survive to keep the problem going.

I now candle eggs even BEFORE I set them to be sure they are at the lower end for porosity. I don't have the incubator space to waste on low-yielding hatches.

In the meantime, I have added cat food to the flock raiser plus free choice calcium that most of my birds consume. It improved shell quality when hubby secretly bought really cheap quality feed for several months and I noticed too many fragile eggs in our layer flock. We always offered calcium free choice. Now we feed 50/50 cheap/expensive feed (both have the similar analysis, but obviously there are quality differences) plus throw them several healthy handfuls of 30% protein or higher dry cat food. They love it and stare holes in us until they get it, too. However, as I mentioned, diet is not the sole cause of porosity. I think there is a genetic component to it as well.