Trying to Kill Eggs Incubation Experiment.

[Carterborchers]

Now you have me worried. I hear button quail are on the beginner level for hatching. I had 5 chicks that turned out to be all male and one female. For 5 weeks or so, they lived harmoniously, but I guess bird puberty set in and I selected the male she seemed most interested in, and set them up in a separate honeymoon enclosure. After a couple of fart eggs, I began getting a fertilized egg a day. 5 have hatched, but there are 21 in the incubator. My thoughts were to get a few more hens for the lonely bachelors and make everyone happy.

I’ve got to stop hatching, but feel badly about tossing eggs close to “term.” I definitely can’t if they’re peeping from inside. Where should I draw the cut off line of who lives and who dies? Should I just poke a hole in it and throw it away? Or will they still come flying out of the trash, hardy as they seem to be?

 

[Susan Skylark]

After Day 10-12 on coturnix is really hard to kill embryos as they really start looking like quail and not aliens! If you need to cull late term eggs I’d just let them sit at room temp for a few days (unopened), the poor things will die of hypothermia and just fade away, poking a hole in the shell and letting them be killed by bacteria or dehydration is a miserable way to go. But they should put warning labels on eggs, like cigarettes, they’re addicting!

 

[Ladybird CA]

I’ve heard fertility greatly declines after day 10 so half might not hatch? Would be interested in knowing if most do, especially the 3 week old egg. Also if the chicks are smaller than the younger eggs. I’ve read that one should wait 2 weeks to set the first button quail eggs. The trio of buttons I got on Friday the person who had them was unsure of the birds’ ages but that they had laid 5 eggs since they got them so I’m thinking of waiting until after egg 14 to incubate their eggs. Once they start laying again after the move.