Trader Joes & Other Grocery Store Egg Hatching Club - Are you a Member

[CricketYang]

Picked up some fertile eggs from Whole Foods yesterday. The sell-by date on them is the eighteenth of this month, it was the latest I could find! I had room in my incubator so I thought I'd just toss them in and see what happened.

oh I just love experiments!!

 

[GeeVee]

It was truly a fun eggs-periment for me! I still have all my little buggers from G&G market, they are about 6 weeks old now. Looks like I got 2 roos and 7 pullets, not bad!! They are very sweet, and so far are all white/light cream (some with the black markings, they look like dalmatians

).
It may be hard to believe, but eggs can be refrigerated and still hatch! That is what I learned from this experience.
I already said this a few pages earlier, but for all of you who didn't see it, I actually got a better hatch rate from my store-bought eggs than the eggs I bought from a local farmer, where the eggs were all less than 4 days old and had not been refrigerated. Pretty interesting.
I will try to post some pics soon

 

[sequoiacyclist]

GeeVee, I have had the same experience with hatch rates. I would have thought that eggs from a commercial operation would be less fertile because the roo to hen ratio is much higher. Boy was I wrong! Now I am incubating some BCM eggs and I put in a couple of fertile store bought eggs with them so I can monitor their progress along with the BCM eggs (BCM eggs are really hard to candle because of their dark color). Every time I see one of the store bought eggs developing I am blown away at the tenacity of the little embryos inside. "Hey, we want to live too!"

 

[callducklover20]

Oh who ever was talking about Wild Oats-Whole foods bought them out, some of the stores are still Wild Oats and the new built ones are Whole Foods. Dont know if they have the fertile eggs but now Im going to go look lol dang you guys

 

[VioletandBodie]

i think at least one of my store bought eggs are fertile but there really dark so i couldn't say for shure

 

[tallyho]

For Portlanders (OR), I think Food Front (a local co-op) gets their eggs from a local farm. Out of curiosity I looked up the farm and they have videos online of their free range birds cruising around and I think I spy a rooster here and there. Would that mean that the eggs in the carton at the store might be fertile or would they have to be labeled that way? Don't know anything about commercial eggs regulations.

 

[GeeVee]

sequoiacyclist- do you have any pics of your full grown supermarket birds?
I was so surprised when I candled them and saw how many were developing. It was really just a for fun experiment, I maybe expected 1 or 2 miracle chicks to hatch. I got my "real" hatching eggs from the farmer, but lo and behold, the market eggs more than doubled my hatch! Now I have too many!

I don't understand how they could have such a good hatch rate what with the refrigeration, transportation, and hen ratio

But one thing is for sure- they should be great layers

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Hatch rates on fridge eggs are higher than non fridge eggs after the 14th day an they drop off very slowly. 50% can still be achieved at around a month old. Non fridge eggs usually dont hatch well if at all after 21 days.

Fertile does not have to be put on fertile eggs but many do because it sells to some people.

 

[callducklover20]

Ok there are no "Fertile" eggs at Whole Foods here in KC-just Organic cage free eggs for Amish and Mennonite farms, wish just one of those cartons was marked "fertile" lol

 

[Madcap621]

Mine weren't marked "fertile", just 'free range', BUT...................I had a 40% hatch rate..........................

Lovely Dk broqn XXL eggs!