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.
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.)
