Pre-incubator egg temp

[J and R Farm]

We have separated our "breeding pairs" and have begun to gather eggs to put into the incubator. Found one today later than normal and it was cold. At what temp does the fertile egg die before putting it in the incubator? And how long can you store them before needing to put them in the incubator?

 

[Kelsie2290]

From reading 28.4*F seems to be the temperature under which you don't want hatching eggs to fall or they will be damaged. Hatch rate is usually pretty steady until 7-10 days, then it starts to drop, older eggs will still hatch sometimes (think about how a hen will collect eggs for 3 weeks or so and often most will hatch) but the older the egg the lower chance it has of hatching. Brinsea has a nice article on storing hatching eggs. http://brinsea.com/customerservice/storage.html and temperature effects http://brinsea.com/customerservice/poweroff.html There is a really nice BYC article on Hatching in general also https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101