Reject Hatching Eggs - aka "The Undesirable Egg Experiment"

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Some update pictures of the two chicks I gave to my broody hen! They grow so fast! Look at the difference in just 4 days! The yellow chick definitely isn't going to have splash markings though! She will be a surprise!
It wasn't an easy task getting good pictures with my hen constantly photo bombing. :lau

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Honestly I love it when people go out of the norm and try things, so I'll be sure to read such an article if it pops up. If you show how to salvage 'undesirable' eggs for incubation, and can prove via later life study that having such 'undesirable' chicks does not set those individuals up for odd genetic mutations or problems, then this will open doors to salvage entire lines of chickens, including endangered breeds. Just think of a scenario like this:

1 rooster and 2 hens left to an endangered breed; one hen lays fine, the other lays funny. Common sense says breed only the fine-laying hen with the rooster, but numbers are important right now so the funny-laying hen should not be discarded either. She lays Rocket eggs? Lumpy ones? Cracked ones? Porous ones? Other oddities? Worry not people, CluckNDoodle from backyard chickens discovered how to get chicks out of such undesirable eggs, and moreso, which ones are safe from physical oddities/problems as they grow up, and can be kept for emergency breeding. Filtering out the odd egg shapes can come later when you have enough specimens to keep the chicken breed from falling extinct!

No one has ever done this before, but there's always a first time for everything. Thank you for taking this plunge!
 
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Eelantha said:
Honestly I love it when people go out of the norm and try things, so I'll be sure to read such an article if it pops up. If you show how to salvage 'undesirable' eggs for incubation, and can prove via later life study that having such 'undesirable' chicks does not set those individuals up for odd genetic mutations or problems, then this will open doors to salvage entire lines of chickens, including endangered breeds. Just think of a scenario like this:

1 rooster and 2 hens left to an endangered breed; one hen lays fine, the other lays funny. Common sense says breed only the fine-laying hen with the rooster, but numbers are important right now so the funny-laying hen should not be discarded either. She lays Rocket eggs? Lumpy ones? Cracked ones? Porous ones? Other oddities? Worry not people, CluckNDoodle from backyard chickens discovered how to get chicks out of such undesirable eggs, and moreso, which ones are safe from physical oddities/problems as they grow up, and can be kept for emergency breeding. Filtering out the odd egg shapes can come later when you have enough specimens to keep the chicken breed from falling extinct!

No one has even done this before, but there's always a first time for everything. Thank you for taking this plunge!
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I love that! I hadn't thought of it that way! You have my nerd brain really excited about this! lol 🤓 I keep more notes on things than is probably necessary, but I wouldn't know how the seasons and weather effect my hatches if I didn't. :lau

My friend has been working on bringing Iowa Blues back from their "very rare" status. They're a beautiful breed and wonderful foragers. I raised one that had a slipped tendon that I wasn't able to repair (I'm quite certain it was due to an injury but he won't be used for breeding purposes anyway). I do seem to gravitate toward saving all the chicks, lol.

It will be interesting to see what eggs I get from these two (hoping they're both girls) and see if the shape of the oviduct could be genetic, causing the oblong eggs. I don't anticipate porous eggs from Dotty only because it's usually related to the age of the hen or their feed but I'll definitely try to update on that in about 6 months and stay in touch with my friend on the chicks she has as well.

I can say with a degree of confidence that I have done plenty of assisted hatches and raised those chicks, given them to friends with breeding flocks, and in turn hatched their eggs without needing assistance. I've done it several times with all sorts of assists, including malpositions. So while I didn't document the process quite as closely as this, I still feel comfortable saying that assists don't cause genetically inferior chickens and most assisting is probably more related to collecting, handling, and incubation practices. With the exception of the ones that hatch with obvious deformities such as missing toes or crossbeak but I haven't dealt with that much myself. I could certainly start trying to document more of that more closely as well!
 
CluckNDoodle said:
I love that! I hadn't thought of it that way! You have my nerd brain really excited about this! lol 🤓 I keep more notes on things than is probably necessary, but I wouldn't know how the seasons and weather effect my hatches if I didn't. :lau

My friend has been working on bringing Iowa Blues back from their "very rare" status. They're a beautiful breed and wonderful foragers. I raised one that had a slipped tendon that I wasn't able to repair (I'm quite certain it was due to an injury but he won't be used for breeding purposes anyway). I do seem to gravitate toward saving all the chicks, lol.

It will be interesting to see what eggs I get from these two (hoping they're both girls) and see if the shape of the oviduct could be genetic, causing the oblong eggs. I don't anticipate porous eggs from Dotty only because it's usually related to the age of the hen or their feed but I'll definitely try to update on that in about 6 months and stay in touch with my friend on the chicks she has as well.

I can say with a degree of confidence that I have done plenty of assisted hatches and raised those chicks, given them to friends with breeding flocks, and in turn hatched their eggs without needing assistance. I've done it several times with all sorts of assists, including malpositions. So while I didn't document the process quite as closely as this, I still feel comfortable saying that assists don't cause genetically inferior chickens and most assisting is probably more related to collecting, handling, and incubation practices. With the exception of the ones that hatch with obvious deformities such as missing toes or crossbeak but I haven't dealt with that much myself. I could certainly start trying to document more of that more closely as well!
Click to expand...

I feel you about salvaging chicks/chickens deemed otherwise doomed by current norm standards. Having data on your chickens isn't crazy, it's logical if you're serious about raising them and not making the same mistake twice. I'm keeping a close eye on the laying rate of my own hens to see which ones lay best (which breed backs up its reputation), and plan to breed the best ladies to my chosen rooster and see what comes out of it.

You have the resources, the space (?), and lots of time on your hands to do these experiments at home if your state gets quarantined. People with small flocks like me who are currently restrained in breeding choices (because of what's happening outside & stupid laws for a single rooster by house only) would gladly turn to an article like yours if our best laying hens laid oddly, or if our only available rooster came from a hen who laid oddly (read: those with 1 rooster per home rule can't keep all their hatched cockerels until they're 6 months old for proper selection - they must get rid of their extras a soon as they start crowing, so the one cockerel picked to man the ladies has chances to show flaws not yet detectable at 6 weeks old). Coping with what we have for flocks is something I suspect we all will have a crash-course in during the following weeks (months, year?), so the sooner we learn how to manage all our chickens, the more options we will have to support ourselves until things calm down. So yes, your future article about undesirable eggs/chickens might come into use much sooner than you think! xD
 
CluckNDoodle said:
Some update pictures of the two chicks I gave to my broody hen! They grow so fast! Look at the difference in just 4 days! The yellow chick definitely isn't going to have splash markings though! She will be a surprise!
It wasn't an easy task getting good pictures with my hen constantly photo bombing. :lau

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The yellow one reminds me of my salmon faverolles chicks!
 
CluckNDoodle said:
They're all great! Rocket and Sticky went home with a friend along with most of the other chicks. I still have two peeps that I put with my broody hen but they don't have names yet. I'll get some pictures later today but she takes them into the broody box every time I go out there, to "protect" them from me, lol. The yellow chick I still have was from a porous egg, so maybe Dotty?

On another note, I almost didn't keep these two damaged eggs for my current hatch since I so recently did this experiment with not so desirable results for the cracked egg but these two have smaller blemishes than the cracked Olive Egger did.

They're Crested Cream Legbars. I put nail polish on the hair line crack that did show some minimal discoloration in the shell so there was probably some leakage and I put a small piece of tape over the egg with the hole but even though I don't see evidence of leaking on the shell, the air cell was quite a bit larger on this one so I think it probably did leak a bit.

I set them a day later than my other eggs, in a separate incubator.

This is going to become a thing where I set all of my eggs regardless of what is wrong with them isn't it...lol.

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How are these two doing?
 

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