Wether you order eggs or not is a personal decision and many times is based on the local availability of the type of breed you are interested in. It isn't necessarily a waste of money to order eggs if what you are looking for is a rare breed and there is no one local or the breed you are looking at getting is just too expensive to buy chicks or adults.
I regulary ship Araucana eggs ( yes the real ones ). When someone wants to buy them from me, I first find out where they are located to see if I know of a breeder that is closer to them than I am. If I can find someone one closer to them I will refert them to that person. The shorter the distance the happier the egg. Araucana are incredibly difficult to hatch in perfect circumstances, let alone being shipped halfway accross the world. There are several reason why an egg will not develop.
(1) The egg is old. Some sellers will ship old eggs just to fill an order, along with fresh eggs. I personally feel that if you are shipping an egg it shouldn't be more than 4 days old when it leaves the premises. I collect eggs for 3 days and then send them on the morning of the 4th day. I write the date they were collected on each egg as I am collecting them. Lets say I have an order of 1 dozen to go out Tuesday. I will start collecting eggs on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for that order. Monday night I package the eggs and print the shipping label and Tuesday morning I drive to the post office to catch the first truck out. I always send a few extra. Now lets say there are some left over that I didn't ship out because the girls are being generous, but not enough to fill another order. Thats where the dates I write on there come in handy. I will continue to collect eggs and write the date on their untill I have another order come in. When that order comes in I will only fill it with eggs from 3 days prior to the date I will be shipping it out and I can tell by the dates I have written on the eggs. All eggs that don't ship out by Friday go in my incubator every Friday for myself.
(2) Not packaged properly. If an egg is shaken too much during travel it can cause an embryo not to develop. I always package the eggs in bubble wrap and set them in a box with cotton batting on the bottom, sides and tops. The eggs are packaged pointy end down in the box with their tops oriented to the top of the box where the shipping label is. There is less air sac movement from side to side and the post office usually keeps the shipping label of boxs right side up for easy scanning.
(3) Eggs are not fertile. Always a possibility. I hatch eggs every week from all my pens to keep track of fertility and quality. I get ones that are not fertile every now and then. One of the reasons I ship extra.
(4) Shipping shakes the air cell even when packaged properly and can cause damages which keeps it from developing.
I also regulary buy hatching eggs from other breeders to keep track of how hatch rates are on their shipped eggs. I usually end up with no chicks hatching or if I am really lucky 1 chick hatching, so when I get an email from someone who bought eggs from me and they have happily hatched several chicks I am happy. I ask that everyone buying eggs from me send me an email when they candle the first time to let me know development. Usually development is 50 %.
Lanae
