Stabilizing aircells on shipped eggs

[Nksg75]

I am wondering if anyone out there has ever tried waiting longer than 36 hours to set shipped eggs?
My question is really, if the aircells are unstable will time alone fix this(just sitting fat end up), or does the start of development of a embryo actually need to happen to have it stabilize?
I am contemplating waiting about 4 days after I receive shipped eggs to see if there is any improvement.
The eggs I ordered are coming from California and I am in Texas, so I am sure the aircells will not be stable.
I ordered these eggs back in November, and I kept putting the seller off from shipping, I felt bad doing it again, so when he emailed me again yesterday, I just said go ahead and ship them. I truly don't need anymore chickens, yet I still ordered these eggs!!
They were shipped out yesterday, and should arrive by Thursday/Friday.
I was thinking of waiting till at least Monday to set them.
Thanks

 

[UThobbyfarmer]

On shipped eggs I wait 24 hours to rest. Then start incubating without turning for another 3+ days. There are many ways people handle shipped eggs. That's just what I've done.

 

[Nksg75]

Thanks for responding. I have tried the wait 24hr time, however I have never tried the no turn for 3 days. When I waited 24 hr, that didn't seem to change much as far as the stability of the aircelll.
I have read that the hatachibility of fertile eggs goes crashing down when not turned for the first few days(due to both malpositions, and late dis). How have your shipped eggs turned out when you didn't turn for 3 days?
I was thinking of trying to set these eggs for 3-4 days on the shelf and walk away. I am curious if I would come back to stable aircells or not.

 

[UThobbyfarmer]

My understanding is the first 24 hours allows the rest of the egg to stabilize and realign. Not just the aircells. I'm forgetting the name of the exact bits but it can be looked it up.

The no turning does stabilize the aircells.

Yes, there will be casualties either way. Turning or not. You'll need to figure out how you want to error. I've never had a chick hatch from an egg with a detached or severely saddles aircell at lockdown.

Here's my shipped egg stats. Does not account for eggs that arrived cracked or infertile eggs. Hatched 0/24 (incubator malfunction), 3/48, 2/14, 8/24, 3/12. In general more are getting to lockdown as I slowly tweak my method. In general I'm tired of the losses. This time I've got local bought or my own eggs. No matter how rare or beautiful the eggs I've stopped buying eggs from afar. Now I only try those within one state of mine.

 

[Nksg75]

I comepletely agree with the distance and states that border us. Your right, I have the best hatches from eggs that are within my state, even better with local eggs, and ones I transport myself.
I ordered from Papa's Poultry because I wanted a chick that lays olive eggs and can be sexed at hatch.
My daughter and I have found a great expierement (one that we can do together) that is supposed to be 85-90%'correct on predicting sex before hatch. This expierement has been published before in some published expierement and I thought regardless of outcome we would have some fun with it.
We did it on a recent batch of local eggs(52/60 hatched).
We then separated the predicted sexes into 2 different hatchers, and all went well until they went to my cousin who had just lost her entire flock in one night to 3 different predators that surprisingly worked together to kill them all.
So I took care of the new hatchlings for the first 3 days (all the while keeping the predicted sexes separate) They were all mixed beeeds so they could not be sexed at hatch.
Anyway, regardless, I then sent them to their new home about 4 days old, and her husband accidentally mixed them all up and put them in one large brooder, and ruined our ability to see the results.
So this time I decided to both get what I wanted in the color of egg laying hens along with the bonus of sexing them right away.
This expieriment has to do with using a very accurate digital caliper to record egg length and width. Then those numbers are put into a formula (some special formula, I had my daughter calculate because I am terrible at math, and had a hard time figuring out this sideways steps formula... blah, blah, blah math stuff)
It all could be complete bogus, however it was fun to do, and I just wish we could have found out!. It also could be a future science expiernent for school!!

 

[ChickNanny13]

I recall reading about "caliper to egg length & width" ... Sexing by egg shape; round = pullets & long = cockerel. The eggs compared should be from a single hen, as hens determine the sex of the chick. Was interesting read, hope you get to do the experiment, I should would like to know the results.

 

[Nksg75]

Yes, I was planning on posting the whole expierement on here. It's kind of fun, regardless of outcome! Makes for a great school project that's for sure. The first time I did it I had a decent number of eggs(60) to do the expierement on, this time I will be lucky to have any. I only ordered 6, however I heard he is generous with extras. So the expierement probably has too few.

Here is a link to the article I read:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-635X2013000300006


Here is the formula we used directly from the article. We just did the shape index calculation, as I am not much of a mathematician and most of the terminology in regard to stepwise logistics regression...blah blah blah was so confusing to me.


The maximum widths and lengths of each egg were measured with using Mutitoyo digital calliper (Mutitoyo, Japan) (±0.01 mm) and their shape index was calculated using the formula:

SI = (W / L) × 100 (Yannakopoulos & Tserveni-Gousi, 1986).

where SI= shape index, W= width of the egg, and L= length of the egg

 

[song of joy]

Delaying incubation for more than 24 hours is not likely to stabilize the air cells. Air cells will become more stable over the first several days of incubation as the blood vessel network spreads through the egg. However, this takes 7 to 10 days. Many people compromise by not turning the first 3 days, but this is probably not adequate to stabilize the air cells, as the blood vessel network is small and fragile at the time they start turning.

I've tried not turning shipped eggs for 2 days, followed by keeping them upright and only slightly shifting them from side to side. I still ended up with 0 hatching.

Check out this article on stabilizing air cells: https://www.chickenforum.com/threads/incubation-of-shipped-eggs.3192/
It suggests not turning the eggs for the first 7 or 8 days, which has apparently resulted in good hatch rates. I would definitely try this if the air cells are rolling (detached) or saddled.

 

[Nksg75]

Ok, thank you. I will read that article!!

 

[ChickNanny13]

song of joy Thank you for sharing, great article!