question about purchasing hatching eggs...

[Momagain1]

never done it, so needed to know if there are any questions/concerns I should have...

things running in my head are:

how do I know they are fertile eggs?
how do I know that they will be "good" to incubate after shipping?

lets say they ship same day or day after they are laid..and it takes 3 or so days to get to me...??? they'll still be viable once in incubator??

 

[Kevin565]

never done it, so needed to know if there are any questions/concerns I should have...

things running in my head are:

how do I know they are fertile eggs You should be able to candle after a few days of incubating.
how do I know that they will be "good" to incubate after shipping?After candling you should be able to see if air cells are in tact. However, if you see any cracks, Mold, or anything else that doesn't seem right I wouldn't incubate it.

lets say they ship same day or day after they are laid..and it takes 3 or so days to get to me...??? they'll still be viable once in incubator??They should be viable but there are many factors involved in this

 

[Lacrystol]

Very good questions however, not the most important ones. When getting shipped eggs, theres a couple of things you should do first. First Candle them, you want to look for hair line cracks, loose air cells, scrambed up yolks, etc. Once that's done, i would let them sit for about 24 hours, some people let them only sit for 12 hours, I do the full 24. If you have loose air cells, it's really hard to get them to develop and hatch, I have sucessfully done it in the past, kind of a pain but not impossible.. Rule of thumb the older the egg, the slimmer chance of hatching, 4 days is not bad.

Your not going to be able to tell if they are fertiled until you see no growth and even then you won't be able to tell until you crack open the egg and look at the yolk for the white circle, white circle is fertiled. I wouldn't worry about fertiled or not fertiled right now... Be more concerned on the condition of the eggs when you get them. The Post office is extremely Rough on eggs. They could careless what "fragile" means or "handle with care".. I live in Ohio and I got 6 eggs from someone who's in PA, none of them hatched because of loose air cells, then I got replacement eggs 9 more and so far I have ONE that is suppose to go into lockdown on Monday. This batch I received 1 cracked all the way around when I opened them up. So be more concerned on the condition of the eggs rather then fertilization right now..

If you eggs have hair line cracks you can put a some candle wax on them to seal them up, I have done this an amazely they have hatched. So candle your eggs as soon as you get them or at least that night and check there status out. While waiting to candle them put them in a room to set. You will be able to see the loose air cells when you candle..

 

[AinaWGSD]

never done it, so needed to know if there are any questions/concerns I should have...

things running in my head are:

how do I know they are fertile eggs? You're going to pretty much have to take the word of the seller for this one. There isn't really any way to tell if an egg is fertile before putting it in the incubator, so you just have to have faith that at least some of them will be and will develop. You can always ask the seller what their fertility rate has been with their own eggs at home and/or what kind of hatch rate others have had with their eggs. Just remember, not everyone is going to get the same hatch rate with shipped eggs even if they were shipped the same distance and from the same pen because one day you might get someone who is extra rough with the packages they're handling and the next you might have someone who handles them appropriately at the post office.

how do I know that they will be "good" to incubate after shipping? Again, this is kind of a leap of faith thing here. Shipping is rough on eggs and there's no guarantee that any eggs you have shipped will survive the handling in transit. Things like broken eggs are easy to spot, but detached air cells and hairline cracks are not immediately obvious. Sometimes you can catch these things with candling, sometimes not. There are some excellent subjects here on how to increase your odds with hatched eggs.

lets say they ship same day or day after they are laid..and it takes 3 or so days to get to me...??? they'll still be viable once in incubator??They should be fine. Fresh eggs are easier to incubate, but eggs can be a lot older than many people think and still be viable. I am working on my first hatch right now. It was not planned, but we lost our rooster suddenly and did not have time to plan on collecting hatching eggs and just kind of threw everything we had into the incubator. The oldest eggs were easily a week and a half old. We're on day 11 and so far the only eggs that don't have live and moving embryos in them are the ones that were not fertile to begin with and were all tossed by day 5. Some of the girls were not fans of our rooster, and we had never actually seen him mount any of the hens so it was not a surprise that 49% of the eggs were not fertile. I have heard of people having successful hatches with eggs as old as a month.