Shipped eggs in incubator

[newchickychick]

So for no humidity added, the one incubator is staying between 27-33%. The other one with goes between 50% and 55%. Decisions!

 

[SnackMeat]

Split the eggs between them. As the saying goes, don't put all your eggs in one basket.

 

[newchickychick]

Split the eggs between them. As the saying goes, don't put all your eggs in one basket.

That was my initial idea! But we also have eggs arriving on the 7th. I thought I was being clever as the listing said it could take 8-12 weeks to fulfill. I thought I was being clever! Turns out… less so.
May just need a third incubator and I can always give the extra away if I end up not incubating a lot. I know we’ve got local 4-H programs. I really thought it would take a while to get the eggs. I thought I was being a smart cookie, turns out I was a crumbly one.

 

[SnackMeat]

That's ten or eleven days. I'm not sure how many eggs you're running and which type (like Muscovy would be an outlier which I would expect a higher earlier failure rate) and didn't want to go back to scan for if you mentioned it or not.

I tend to get 75-85% fertility rate (depending on who I am getting the eggs from locally.) I just started my first attempt at shipped eggs but I assume the initial fertile signs go down with shipped.


So if you have two incubators and they may be fit 40 or 50 if you squeeze, you should know by day 7 (unless the temperature is low, so triple check that throughout the process with separate thermometers. I also like a laser temp gun) expect 8-10 of those to be infertile, not including early quitters.


Depending on how on top of things you are, careful, double checking the temp, no extended power outages, not too high humidity, I would expect you to have between 1-6 early quitters. I've been lucky the last couple of hatches and I feel like maybe one or two max might quit.


So I guess by the 7th you should have (depending on eggs currently running) 8-16 be infertile or quit early.

But shipping is a whole different ball game. From what I've read, local fertile eggs (so after the infertile ones are removed), a good average is about 80% hatch. Some will get into the 90-95% but 80% is a good baseline.


But I have read shipped, that can go down to a 50% baseline. I've read of more people having the 0-10% luck than the very few people I've read who've gotten 95-100% hatch rate from shipped eggs (and honestly I think I only saw that from a single person to they were very much an outlier.)


In any event, good to have a plan for the third incubator-- maybe even borrowing from someone, but you have four hatching soon right? Then count on probably 20% being infertile and knowing that before July 7th.

 

[newchickychick]

That's ten or eleven days. I'm not sure how many eggs you're running and which type (like Muscovy would be an outlier which I would expect a higher earlier failure rate) and didn't want to go back to scan for if you mentioned it or not.

I tend to get 75-85% fertility rate (depending on who I am getting the eggs from locally.) I just started my first attempt at shipped eggs but I assume the initial fertile signs go down with shipped.


So if you have two incubators and they may be fit 40 or 50 if you squeeze, you should know by day 7 (unless the temperature is low, so triple check that throughout the process with separate thermometers. I also like a laser temp gun) expect 8-10 of those to be infertile, not including early quitters.


Depending on how on top of things you are, careful, double checking the temp, no extended power outages, not too high humidity, I would expect you to have between 1-6 early quitters. I've been lucky the last couple of hatches and I feel like maybe one or two max might quit.


So I guess by the 7th you should have (depending on eggs currently running) 8-16 be infertile or quit early.

But shipping is a whole different ball game. From what I've read, local fertile eggs (so after the infertile ones are removed), a good average is about 80% hatch. Some will get into the 90-95% but 80% is a good baseline.


But I have read shipped, that can go down to a 50% baseline. I've read of more people having the 0-10% luck than the very few people I've read who've gotten 95-100% hatch rate from shipped eggs (and honestly I think I only saw that from a single person to they were very much an outlier.)


In any event, good to have a plan for the third incubator-- maybe even borrowing from someone, but you have four hatching soon right? Then count on probably 20% being infertile and knowing that before July 7th.

We’re getting our first ever (shipped but we’ve never incubated at all before) eggs on this Saturday! So we would be setting them 24 hours after they’ve settled room temp. fat end up. There will be 20 eggs! That would start them off at being a week and a day in when the other eggs are shipped, and I’m not sure how long it would take to get here.
Out of the 20 eggs, we have 2 incubators that will fit 30 eggs (Maticoopx30).

12 will be Polish eggs, 2 will be Silverudd’s Isbar eggs, 2 will be Swedish Flower Hen eggs, 2 will be Russian Orloff eggs, and 2 will be Pavlovskaya eggs! So all 20 chicken eggs for sure, at least.
The 12 we ordered from Cackle that will ship on the 7th will also be chicken eggs - but I’ve heard they throw in a fair few extras (we’ve never gotten extras with our chick orders though so I’m not 100% sure we will for the eggs). So that puts us at a minimum of 32 eggs with space for a total of 60!

Our humidity without water added has reliably been 29%-35% at most. With water added, it’s been 55% tops when I accidentally put the water adder in too tilted and it added too much, but otherwise stays a flat 50%. I’m tempted to start with dry hatching, and then can easily add in water if the air cells aren’t looking right?

 

[SnackMeat]

I would get a scale that measures in grams (they're pretty cheap) so you're not guessing about weight loss, as I find it's really easy even marking with a pencil to wonder if it's too much or not enough (unless it's *really* too much or not enough, and then you have to hope you have enough time to correct.)

I know conventional advice is 24 hours to get eggs to room temp, but having bought refrigerated local eggs and incubated them, I find 8-12 hours is long enough. I don't want to steer you wrong, so I will just say that I want my eggs in the incubator asap to help with viability. My eggs that came shipped sat at the post office for 3 hours, and we're on a truck for several hours, and probably on another truck etc. So I wasn't worried about very cold temperatures from flying since they were already 12+ hours out from the plane. I had them out for a couple of hours and then started them up in the incubator. But I was also buying form a one person operation so they were probably collecting for a few days and I didn't want to assume all the eggs got to me in a week or less from being laid.


It also matters that I vertically incubate because my air bubble stay at the top. The how to incubate and hatch Muscovy eggs someone posted on this forum has some handy advice for shipped eggs, and a lot has to do with vertical incubating to keep any messed up air bubbles at the fat end.



But there's so many variables! Try different things (useful since you have two incubators, you can play with variables with the same type of eggs) and see what works best. It sucks when you lose an egg or chick, but you'll learn every time something new.

 

[newchickychick]

I would get a scale that measures in grams (they're pretty cheap) so you're not guessing about weight loss, as I find it's really easy even marking with a pencil to wonder if it's too much or not enough (unless it's *really* too much or not enough, and then you have to hope you have enough time to correct.)

I know conventional advice is 24 hours to get eggs to room temp, but having bought refrigerated local eggs and incubated them, I find 8-12 hours is long enough. I don't want to steer you wrong, so I will just say that I want my eggs in the incubator asap to help with viability. My eggs that came shipped sat at the post office for 3 hours, and we're on a truck for several hours, and probably on another truck etc. So I wasn't worried about very cold temperatures from flying since they were already 12+ hours out from the plane. I had them out for a couple of hours and then started them up in the incubator. But I was also buying form a one person operation so they were probably collecting for a few days and I didn't want to assume all the eggs got to me in a week or less from being laid.


It also matters that I vertically incubate because my air bubble stay at the top. The how to incubate and hatch Muscovy eggs someone posted on this forum has some handy advice for shipped eggs, and a lot has to do with vertical incubating to keep any messed up air bubbles at the fat end.



But there's so many variables! Try different things (useful since you have two incubators, you can play with variables with the same type of eggs) and see what works best. It sucks when you lose an egg or chick, but you'll learn every time something new.

Thanks so much! I did plan to leave them vertical as that's what the seller of the eggs suggested to try for my first as that is how they hatch regardless. They had about 1,500 Ebay reviews - at 100% feedback! I was really relieved to find eggs I wanted with great ratings. She has been super helpful!

The advice really does help. I know even the most experienced of hatchers can run into issues, but I'm hoping to at least set everything up for relative success. I would be so bummed if none at all hatched!

I am ordering the scale as we speak!