Turn or not to turn with shipped eggs

[IrisJade]

I just got some shipped duck eggs today in the incubator laying sideways some have some air saddles one sided. Should i keep the turner on or leave for a few days?

 

[DemeterAD9]

Did you let them rest for 12-24hrs pointy side down before popping them in the incubator? This is to help the air cells settle and hopefully stabilize. Not a huge problem if you didn’t but I’d still want them vertical with the air cells end up. Some recommend keeping them vertical for the first few days and then doing horizontal if you have a horizontal turner.

I am not super experienced with shipped eggs, only tried it 5 times. I’ve decided vertical incubation is better but I have a horizontal incubator so I removed the rollers and placed the eggs in cartons, fat side up. I turned them by tilting the entire incubator this way or that several times a day while using a small box to prop up the bator. Worked okay but my best successes was with a batch of eggs that only had to travel a state or two away. Of course packaging and time in the mail plays a huge role as well.

 

[Susan Skylark]

Saddled air cells mean severe shipping trauma, definitely let them sit for a day, maybe incubate upright (wide end up) but most definitely turn them otherwise your hatch rate will be even worse. I got a 25% hatch rate on shipped and saddled quail eggs last spring (90% on home grown eggs), so prepare for a lousy hatch. Not turning the eggs will only further lower hatch rates independent of shipping trauma. The damage is done, the nascent embryos were traumatized in shipping, the air cell is just a symptom. You can’t fix it but not turning will also mess up your eggs. Expect significant dead in shell, failure to hatch, late embryonic death rates plus a mutant or deformed chick or two. Strangely there wasn’t a correlation between saddled air cells and hatching success when it came to individual eggs, the saddled ones were just as likely to hatch as normal eggs within the same batch and the normal eggs were just as likely not to hatch, but overall the batch hatch rate was lousy.