Do jubilee orpington eggs not do as well as others in the mail? I'm on my 4th attempt on shipped eggs, all from different breeders, and it looks like all 20 don't have development. I've only had one egg from those first 3 attempts develop and hatch, and that one died a few days after(it got stuck in shell and I helped it hatch after 48 hours of the zipping stopped). I do fine with other eggs, just had 5/6 polish eggs hatch, the last one zipped a bit and then died. So is it the jubilee's in general, or am I just destined not to have some?
I ordered and received 8 Jubilee eggs, most of which were poopy, from a breeder in Michigan last year. Only two embryos developed. I dropped and broke one candling it, but the other died in the shell, fully developed. I examined it for problems, and found none apparent. Every other fertile egg I ever put into that incubator hatched.
I was looking for some on
eBay another time, for grins, and looked at the reports on one who sold an awful lot of eggs. While
eBay only allows a person to really comment on the packaging, the few who waited for hatch indicated they had zero hatches. Does that mean Jubilees are more fragile in shipment? I don't know. It could also mean that because they are still pricey that there are more unscrupulous breeders. A person could get away with selling unfertilized eggs on
eBay and not suffer for it as long as they were packed and shipped nicely. If I ever had to buy hatching eggs via mail again, I would do it from no further than one state away, and honestly, I'd probably still just go get them (unless the state was California, Texas, New York, or some giant state where "next to" could still be very far away).
That said, I plan to offer my Jubilee eggs for sale and hope that the buyers have better experiences than I did myself. I won't ship when it is below freezing, or when the buyer can't be sure someone will be home to get them right away (or send them to their workplace). I do know people who have successfully hatched English Orps of different colors from hatching eggs, though. You also have to rely on the integrity of the breeders to check fertility. Jubilees have a bad rap for poor fertility--not mine! Since I gave everybody a trim so they are more like American Orps in terms of plumage in the rear, fertility has gone up from 75% to nearly 100%, even in this bitter cold.
