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

[ginormous chicken]

Hi Everyone,

I just put a dozen fertile Whole Foods Eggs in the bator. I think that it depends if you have an egg farm that is local to your area that does fertile eggs. I am in Nor Cal and the fertile eggs come from Petaluma, CA.

I am super egg cited

. I will be hatching red comets or production red mixes.

 

[chickenlady08]

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That sounds awesome! I hope it goes well for you and you get some babies. I think that you may have better luck than my daughter did. We had shipped eggs that originated from RI and my friend mailed them to me from PA. So none hatched but maybe one day I will try again!

Good Luck!!!

 

[ChickenAlgebra]

Um, yeah, I'm a slacker on updating. We have CHICKIES!!!

2 1/2 week TJ eggs - 2 little Leghorns came popping out of their shells, then started running around the bator while wet. Goofs.

10 day TJ eggs - of the 10 at first candling, meh. 6 of them stopped around day 14. But 4 chickies hatched. So not bad at all.

8 day TJ eggs - 2 stopped at day 14ish, 10 hatched. One died the next day, but 9 out of 12 for shipped eggs, I'm liking that.

3 day WH eggs - ALL 12 HATCHED!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blue eggs - 6 eggs, 1 died at day 5. 5 hatched. Woohoo, cute little Easter Eggers. May they not be psycho stupid chickens.

Olive eggs - 6 eggs, all 6 hatched!

Dark chocolate eggs - well, they thought they were Marans, maybe Welsummer, I have no idea. They look like baby Barred Rocks. 11 of 12 hatched! If Barred Rock sexing methods work, 10 girls, 1 boy.

So the TJ babies and the olive eggers are with a JG girl who was thinking about going broody, the blue eggers are with our blue JG girl who had her own chickies, the WH production reds and the I'm not sure what breed, dark eggers are with 2 Orph girls who are sharing the babies. I picked our sweetest, nicest hens who always give us these absolutely sweet chicks, so seeing if a sweet Momma will help keep them a little more docile than the psycho EEs we've had before.

 

[dretd]

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Congrats!! I am very jealous!

I bet the Marans are Cuckoo cuz they look decently like BR. Welsummers are chipmunk chicks so not them.

Let us know if your sweet mom theory (this would be the nurture in nature vs nurture quandary) works. That would be very good information to share!

Good luck with your new flock and did your hubby finish the new coop yet?

 

[ChickenAlgebra]

I know with the production kids, they're more flighty by nature and I'm not going to get rid of all of that. Leghorns have never really bothered me behavior wise, mostly because I know they are flighty. But heck, the JG girl WANTED chicks, and I don't need MORE chicks, so I just stuffed them under her while she happily cooed at me and them, and called it good. She's very proud of her kids.

But man, we've had just total whack job mean EEs before. I don't know if that's nature or not. I know they aren't exactly the brightest bulbs always, but MEAN? I don't put up with mean chickens. Mean birds go to freezer camp. But EEs are such a hit/miss on behavior I think. The kids have some from TSC this year and while they aren't smart, they aren't the evil the prior ones were.

We'll see what our hens manage to make out of these kids. If we just get a bunch of psycho roos out of this, oh well, it was fun seeing what happened with store eggs.

 

[ginormous chicken]

Hey folks.... ok.. It has been 7 days and I have a question: they don't look good. I am not seeing really good veinage. I am thinking that I'll be lucky to get 2 or 3. Any ideas? It doesn't look anything like the hatching eggs I get.

 

[gryeyes]

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Well, it was an eggsperiment for me. The first dozen eggs gave me 3 chicks and the second dozen gave me my cockerel. 4/24 is not great. But I'm awfully proud of those four TJs chicks, anyway!

 

[Peep_Show]

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You'll have a better handle on it at Day 10. Sometimes with the refrigerated eggs they develop a little slower due to "thaw".... I cracked open a couple of SLW eggs I had to put on ice thinking they were dead eggs only to find an embryo... Oops! I saw nothing at 7 days, but at 10 days there was lots o' action.

 

[ChickenAlgebra]

Well, on the raising issue. Meck. The blue egged kids are stupid as all get out and the cockerel is already turning into a jerk. The olive eggers are mostly ok, a little spacey, but not too bad yet - however they are ALL cockerels. Freezer Camp will be seeing EE members and I am admitted defeat on EEs, don't like 'em over all and don't care enough for pretty eggs.

The Marans are cute and fat and sassy as any chick. 10 pullets, 1 cockerel for sure. I'll see how they are on type later on, but I think they'll be good for egg laying pretty dark eggs.

The production crew are flighty, but happily run into the coop behind Mommy, so I hope they are going to do ok. There are some obvious cockerels, but harder to sex yet. Oh well.

Development - ours were pretty much scrambled for the first week really. At first candling - I only tossed eggs that had NOTHING going on. If anything was trying to start, I let them. And they sat in the egg cartons and did NOTHING. No turning, no jiggling, nothing. They needed to settle into decent air cells instead of scrambled mush. I didn't do anything at day 10 other than start the turning. At lock down I pulled anything that had stopped. All the TJ eggs looked pretty scrambled, and we got 15/36 out of them. The WF eggs were less scrambled that we could tell, but we did let them sit and rest first, and they hatched fine, they also had a very good hatch rate - 34/36 survived to the brooder.

What we think helps/hurts shipped eggs -

These are the same as shipped eggs over all. They've been tossed around willy nilly. As nicely as they are packed for shipping, the post office may not be as gentle as possible, and flights can't help the hatch either.

The younger the egg, the better they do.

The cold temps don't seem to make any difference. Freezing would, but just being refridgerated doesn't seem to do anything.

If they've got scrambled air cells, letting them sit for some time seems to help. I think had we turned them early, they've have done nothing.

 

[harleyjo]

A TJ just opened recently within an hour from me. I might have to try this sometime. How do I figure out how fresh the eggs are?