Thanksgiving Hatch- Anyone want to join in?

[neferset]

Quote:
*crosses fingers*

Mine too.

Thank you. I didn't see you there last night. I need all the happy thoughts I can get.

The hatch rates from my own eggs spoiled me, I guess. (No traveling through inclement weather, no questions about handling, just eggs lovingly carried inside to the incubator.)

Catwalk, those little ones are adorable. I've also been looking at the Katiegirl blog. Much cuteness.

 

[THough1956]

OK

First experience with shipped eggs. Bought 14, Zero hatched!! Day 23. Giving up and cutting off the bator when I get home.

May as well just toss my money into thin air!!!!

Argggggggggggggg

 

[neferset]

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. For instance, I started with 26 shipped eggs for Thanksgiving. I got 4 hatchlings (3 ducks, 1 chick). My best hatches have been over 80%.

People tend to chime in and say it makes no difference when I say things like this, but be mindful of the distance your eggs will have to travel when you buy them. You can get lucky sometimes and my favorite (best hatches) egg seller is further away than I first thought, but everything depends on the weather, how long the eggs will be exposed to the weather, and the kind of handling the eggs receive between the post office of origin and your own post office. That said, I don't believe that they are playing basketball with my packages. My brother used to work for the post office and he would get offended if I suggested that. Just, eggs are very fragile things and normal handling for most packages is rough for eggs. Hey, maybe the roads were too bumpy. I've been told that the Xray thing is a myth. The post office doesn't do that or doesn't do that anymore.

I have had a box delayed by a week or more. It arrived open. The seller had written "Live Embryos Do Not XRay." While I agree they were embryos and most embryos are too young to operate XRay equipment, I suspect whoever had to inspect my box was disappointed with what they found. (I couldn't help the pun. It reminded me too much of the lab sign "Ring Worms Wear Gloves." But...Ring Worms don't have hands!) I imagine it was sitting for a week in a stack of questionable packages that needed inspection until it was finally gotten to. In my minds eye the inspection queue looks a bit like that big box room in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the reason was probably much less interesting than that. The point was...by the time I got those eggs, there was 0% fertility.

Anyway, don't feel bad. Don't give up either. Want to know how many chicks I got from my first ever incubator hatch? Out of 25 eggs, 0. I also ordered 36+ hatching eggs later, received 43, brought 11 over to the hatcher for lock down, and got 1 chick (and 10 exploded rotten eggs that only looked like they had something inside when I candled them on day 18). It does feel bad, I'll grant you. Especially if they were too weak to get out of the shell for whatever reason. The trick to getting over it is doing it again. Nothing will cure the lows of a bad first hatch as well as cute little fluff balls.

My advice is to find some one close by with fertile eggs and buy them. Or if you happen to be lucky enough to have a grocery store which sells fertile eggs. There are threads here about people hatching those. Try it again. But at this point you may want to sit out with me and wait for the first hatch of spring.

 

[evonne]

Quote:
if it makes you feel better, i had 0/18 on eggs from my own yard this time.. lol... 11 made it to lockdown and the homemade bator just didn't want to play nice...


i was talking to the lady at th PO the other day.. and the boxes are actually handled more by machines and conveyor belts than humans... all the sorting is done by machines with the bar code info...
and boxes are dropped of a conveyor belt into bins.. could be a 4' drop.. and then boxes are landing on top of them.....
it's amazing that we get anything out of the shipped eggs...

 

[neferset]

It's amazing we *can* ship eggs at all. I would think they qualify as liquids. I was allowed once to ship a container of honey across the country, but if it had been more fluid, at the post office they told me they couldn't have allowed it.

 

[evonne]

Quote:
lol.. the same girl that helped me the 1st time i sent eggs out helped me this time too... she asked if there was anything fragile. liquid, chemical, hazardous, or explosive, i said yes, it's eggs again.. and she laughed...

do they really think that if someone puts a bomb in a box they're going to declare it at the counter??

 

[Freckle Face Farm]

My peeps at the post office know me soon as I walk in. They know what I am sending out..

My mailman lives on my street and brings me my egg deliveries first thing in the am.. So far I have been ok.. He only works on my block Wed..

I try to make sure if I am getting them its on a Wed..

But I have sent out eggs that I have seen the whole box smooshed

Kinda like russian rullett ya never know...I never mark the box eggs those are the ones that seem to keep smooshed..

 

[catwalk]

Quote:

That's good stuff!
I would always get nervous in high school when driving my friends around, and we came across a "stop ahead" sign. Someone's head was getting slammed into the headrest! And we always had to roll down the windows and "watch for ice on bridge".

 

[Jacksonmom]

Well, at the end of my Thanksgiving hatch, I have 10 baby chicks out of 23 eggs that went into the bator. But, when I broke open the remaining 11 (because I HAD to) there were 6 that made it to lockdown!!! including one of the two silkies I had.

What did I do???

 

[neferset]

Maybe nothing wrong. Maybe something. Not all chicks hatch, no matter what you do. Almost 50% isn't all that bad with shipped eggs, also. With shipped eggs, there are so many factors beyond your control that it's slightly unreal.

I saw a few posts up that you were dry incubating. What was your humidity at the end? I tend to dry incubate at the beginning of the hatch then bump the humidity at the end. If for some reason, I can't maintain 60% in the last three days, I wind up helping most of my eggs. If I can stay above 60% in those last days I get great hatches. If it should jump to 70% or higher in lock down, it does not seem to affect the hatch, possibly because the water wasn't there in days 1-17.

When I have ducks, I try to incubate using the standard humidity recommendations and not dry hatch or if I've noticed the eggs dehydrating too rapidly. I candle on the day I move my eggs into lock down and remove every egg that appears to be clear. From my hatch this time, everyone must have seen that I've yet to learn the difference between a healthy, about to be born chick and an egg full of nasty rot. (Though I have learned that you can't see through either of them.)

@catwalk

We used to bump into each other at Bump signs.

I think the best we can do with shipped eggs is pad them well and hope. I once received a small clear plastic carton of quail eggs that was wrapped in bubble wrap, then brown paper. Every egg was intact and they all hatched.

And, eggs are explosive. Ask me how I know.