Transporting Hatching Eggs

[diegartenfrau]

Just looked at this thread
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...g-candling-pics-progression-though-incubation

and I had a lot of porous eggs that looked like that. So it must have been the eggs, maybe? Can porous eggs become more cold on ice then others? The ones that had more of dark shadows seemed not porous but the large majority of the eggs were just like in this picture.

Maybe what I saw is all you could see during candling. We just don't know what we are seeing during the candling, we never did that with the quails.

 

[WalnutHill]

Porosity won't affect the chilling much. The hatching humidity was too low, but if there was no embryo development that doesn't really matter. Did you crack the eggs out to see what happened, if there were any signs of development?

 

[dekel18042]

If you're seeing empty eggs sounds like the eggs may not even have started developing at all. Unless I know what went wrong I always open any eggs that didn't hatch at the end to see what I can learn. Once I had some delivered eggs (not shipped, driven to me in a car.) and not one even started at all. My own eggs I threw in as test eggs all hatched right on schedule so it wasn't the incubation that was the problem.
You might want to try hatching some of your own eggs if they are fertile or if anyone nearby has fertile eggs just for your own learning experience.

 

[diegartenfrau]

I don't think it was the humidity, I was right in the correct window for incubating and hatching. I am sorry I keep using the wrong term for incubating and hatch, calling it all the same. I had the humidity 45-55% mostly at about 50% for incubating and at 65%-70% mostly close to 65% for the lock down hatch time. I tested my hygrometer with a humidity test bag before starting and it was within 5% so it was very easy to keep track of the humidity so it was at the right level....as it was explained in the instructions file I found on here.
the more I read, the more I am convinced the ice hurt them.
I think I wait for the unpleasant opening of eggs until my husband comes home from work. I don't really know enough about it to look at the inside and then know what affected the outcome. I have no reference for that or experience.

I don't have fertile eggs, in the city we can't have roosters and I don't know anybody with fertile eggs around here.

At this point I think it's a waste of money to do the incubating if this is such a iffy proposition. The quails were always so easy, hardly any loss of eggs. They seemed just to pop out easily. I thought the chickens were just as easy. I just don't know if I can trust any eggs I can get online, if I got such a bad result from a seller that had a really good reputation. I don't think I can even get replacement eggs from her since she just shut down the farm for some time because they have to move and she is having surgery......hmmm thinking, maybe that's why I got bad eggs. I was probably the last person to get eggs from her the next day she announced closing shop.

I think in the long run it's cheaper to just buy the chicks.

 

[dekel18042]

I've come to the same conclusion, too, unless I'm hatching my own eggs. I've had dismal results with shipped eggs, and the one I got a good hatch rate then had problems with the chicks.
The one time the eggs arrived by car the hatch rate was 0, and like you, shortly thereafter the seller went out of chickens.

Thankfully I've located a place near us that sells high quality sexed chicks or I can hatch my own.

 

[diegartenfrau]

Thank you all! we opened most of the eggs and just as I thought when I candled them most had never started hatching and the few with shadows had mostly just a small grey blob and greyish fluid in the yolk.

I think I order some chicks today