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

[Gayle-the-Australorp]

Thanks for the chart, makes things easier.

I'm a little nervous about trying to hatch a store bought egg, since my other attempts failed.

Any tips?

 

[Peep_Show]

At Trader Joe's it never hurts to ask if there's anything fresher in the back. The floor clerks are usually most helpful. At 10 days out for freshness, there should be a more recent shipment they're holding.

 

[Gayle-the-Australorp]

Thanks for the tip, I've been reading the first few pages of this thread and saw some people had tried incubating eggs that were a bit older.

A relative did some grocery shopping for me this week and I had no idea she bought fertile eggs until I checked the fridge recently.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Thanks for the chart, makes things easier.

I'm a little nervous about trying to hatch a store bought egg, since my other attempts failed.

Any tips?

Unfortunately these eggs go through a lot of things that greatly reduce hatching and even when they do hatch chicks can be weak due to those factors. My own results have been very hit or miss with a few good results and quite a few times I got zero to hatch. I read where a lady was talking just about the reduced hatchability of shipped eggs where she routinely got over 85% hatch on her own eggs then drove an hour to a poultry show where someone was supposed to buy some eggs but they didn't show up. She took the eggs back home and put them in her incubator and then got less than 50% to hatch. These eggs intended for eating get pretty rough mechanical handling/washing, driven around a bunch and are kept too cold. I think the biggest factor is you should not incubate them with other non-sterilized eggs in a completely sterile incubator. I think the cleaning process makes them extremely prone to bacterial infection. You also should let them warm completely to room temperature fat end up for a day and then incubate them fat end up without turning for two or three days. Candle often and get rid of bad eggs quickly. I'd probably leave the eggs in the turner (turned off) fat end up for hatching as well unless you've candled the eggs and found all the air cells to be where they should be and not moving around at all.

 

[Gayle-the-Australorp]

I actually looked at them and the air cells are all intact and where they should be.

I understand that they can get shifted around, the same happens with mail order eggs.

I only want to try just to see if anything happens.

 

[oldrooster]

Quote: I didn't know there was a converter on google since I worked in a grocery store and did it the old fashined was and would have subtracted 31 (for days in January) and had got Feb 7.

 

[Pensmaster]

I didn't know there was a converter on google since I worked in a grocery store and did it the old fashined was and would have subtracted 31 (for days in January) and had got Feb 7.

Me either until I was looking for the chart. I was pretty sure subtraction worked I just wasn't sure if it started day one. Only makes sense that it does. Thanks.

 

[Gayle-the-Australorp]

Just out of curiosity is there a way to check to see if an egg is fertile without breaking it open or incubating it?

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Just out of curiosity is there a way to check to see if an egg is fertile without breaking it open or incubating it?

I WISH! I'd be selling an awful lot of eating eggs every week. There are people who will say that you can tell by the shape of the egg but the US Department of Agriculture investigated and tested the theory with hundreds of thousands of eggs and found no correlation. I had someone who bought some chicks from me swear that this works 98% but there is a better chance that the temperature of their incubator kills off male embryos and they would have gotten the same results with the eggs that they ate instead of incubated. I'm sure I have tweeted my incubator many times since but I once sold several consecutive hatches of Buff Orpingtons to a lady and she told me the following spring that out of 37 chicks she only got 6 cockerels and I incubated every egg regardless of shape.

 

[Gayle-the-Australorp]

Oh, ok. Well, looks like I'll just have to incubate one of the eggs and see what happens. I checked some reference photos of chicken eggs at different stages of development so I have a rough idea of what to look for.