Storing eggs before incubation

[Spoon87]

I'm looking to hatch chicks in an incubator, it'll be my first attempt at hatching chicks. It's still pretty cold out and my hens are kept on a patch of land quite a distance from my house, does it matter if eggs go cold before I start incubation? it's about 10 degrees outside in the day and drops to 3/4 at night. Am I better waiting until spring or does it not matter? also could use some advise on how to store eggs until incubation begins, how long should I wait (if I need to at all as I have 8 hens that lay daily) and at what temp should I store them.

Many Thanks

 

[Kelsie2290]

Really nice BYC article on Hatching https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/hatching-eggs-101
28.4*F seems to be the temperature under which you don't want hatching eggs to fall or they will be damaged... if the temps are single digits where you are and you can't collect the eggs before they drop low, you probably want to wait until warmer weather, unless you don't mind low hatch rates. Hatch rate is usually pretty good until 7-10 days, then it starts to drop, older eggs will still hatch sometimes (think about how a hen will collect eggs for 3 weeks or so and often most will hatch) but the older the egg the lower chance it has of hatching. Brinsea has a nice article on storing hatching eggs. http://brinsea.com/customerservice/storage.html and temperature effects http://brinsea.com/customerservice/poweroff.html

 

[Spoon87]

That's fantastic, thanks very much. It'll be a while before things warm up here significantly so I've decided to chance it with some eggs laid today. Fingers crossed