Selling elongated eggs - they just do NOT hatch well

[MobyQuail]

I prefer a nice oval egg when its called for, no substitutes. and a chicken that does it 95% of the time.
looking at an egg, you say, do I want a chicken thats gonna grow to lay this?
if you want to be called a "breeder"...they should be "breeding" for eggs to standard and culling bad eggs and birds., not setting the good ones and selling the rest, sucks but sure someone is doing it. imho.

 

[Kermit's shadow]

If you do some searching of commercial poultry research, they do avoid setting odd-shaped eggs, but I have never seen any explanation of why. But eggs are known to change with the age of the hens - on a commercial scale, eggs from pullets require slightly different incubation conditions to older layers. No 2 eggs are ever going to be exactly the same but so long as they don't vary so very much, "normal" incubation conditions will get both to hatch, eggs do not have to be very different in shell porosity for "normal" conditions to fail.

 

[Tala]

My BR girl lays really long skinny eggs. They've gotten worse with age. I hatched some of her smaller more-normal pullet sized eggs, even though small pullet size eggs aren't recommended I still think they are better than the long narrow ones. I had some BO girls in the past that always laid rather long eggs but I never hatched any of them.

 

[Kermit's shadow]

Sure. selling odd-shaped eggs is basically wrong - many will be unhatchable using normal incubation conditions.
But, I am unsure how a handful of cells (the embryo), can affect the operation of the oviduct - if the embryo is fine, and the shell and membranes are in good enough shape to be able to protect it from invading bacteria, the egg is hatchable.

Until last year, I set hundreds of eggs every year and always ignored the failed hatchers. But last year I had to buy an accurate scale for another completely different reason, so this year, out of curiosity, I have weighed many of the eggs before setting. I can pick out the fertile, live, hopeless causes only 5 or so days into incubation - they loose too much weight. If I had a couple more incubators, I could run them at higher RH and I am sure that the eggs with more prorous shells would hatch fine.

 

[pdsavage]

I like to give every egg a chance,I have the space and time.So I say if you have the space and time and want to give those odd eggs a try go for it.Even perfect eggs sometimes won't hatch,I have hatched dirty eggs,washed eggs,odd shaped eggs,old eggs and prorous eggs.
Who knows there may be a little gem hidding in and odd egg.

 

[Phage]

Quote:
I am with you, as a hatchaholic I will set anything "fertile" as long as I have room. BUT I don't want to be sent them in the mail

 

[MicheleC]

I received some eggs I purchased at auction today and got one very long, with a " nippled" tip. Thought it a little odd to mail a customer an egg like that. It was also very rough/porous. On the other hand, the auction was for 9+, and I got 12 so it was an extra anyway. All the other eggs looked great so no biggie, just odd.

 

[ILOVELEGHORNS]

Interesting topic. A couple days ago, I had 10 of a dozen Exchequer Leghorn eggs hatch that I bought off of Ebay and they are healthy and energetic little flufballs!. Half of the hatchlings were from long skinny torpedos, but I knew I could pull it off and really wanted them to hatch. I incubated them and they were so active and had super veinage. I ended up assisting those babies on day 20, when the other chicks pipped the airpocket. NOT for the inexperienced to assist the way I did. You do it the wrong way or at the wrong time, you could easily cause them to bleed to death and or get infections. I believe that natures way of death in the shell is a bit more kinder than being traumatized and or bleeding to death. These guys could not move to the correct positions in these eggs. Those eggs were stuffed.Beaks and necks straight down to the small ends of the eggs. I knew the egg shape was the problem, not genetic deficiencies. So I felt safe to do my part and help. In any case, I can post pics of the babies as soon as I take some tomorrow. They are so worth all the time and effort I put into them! SO adorable!

 

[Mahonri]

Hmm... I just had a BWA come out of one of my elongated, porous eggs. It's huge too.

BUT, I will say, it pipped over 18 hours ago and just barley zipped so I suppose there is something to what you are saying.

My normal eggs all just pipped and zipped.

 

[SkyWarrior]

I just hatched a rough looking, weird egg from my own girls. I don't get why this hen lays these type of eggs, but she does and the chick is fine.

Since I don't sell my eggs for hatching, it doesn't matter. But if I did sell eggs for hatching, I'd make sure they were nicely formed for a good hatch.