What temp is too cold to hatch eggs?

[LexiLou27]

Got my first duck egg this morning, it was 75 degrees out yesterday but dropped to 15 overnight to this morning + snow. I didn’t let them out until about 9, so it was out there for a few hours & I was wondering if it would still be viable if incubated. I don’t think it was frozen at all & I candled it & it looks normal but it’s also very dirty.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Got my first duck egg this morning, it was 75 degrees out yesterday but dropped to 15 overnight to this morning + snow. I didn’t let them out until about 9, so it was out there for a few hours & I was wondering if it would still be viable if incubated. I don’t think it was frozen at all & I candled it & it looks normal but it’s also very dirty.

I just spent the last month incubating 12. 2 successes. our lows were high 20s overnight. I would not excepct success. (In fairness, I have consistently low duck hatch rates from my flock, even when weather is more mild).

 

[nuthatched]

That egg is too dirty to incubate, IMHO, plus, you typically do not incubate the first few months worth of eggs.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I was wondering if it would still be viable if incubated. I don’t think it was frozen at all & I candled it & it looks normal but it’s also very dirty.

I don't know how cold it actually got on the inside of the egg where the embryo is located. The egg material is fairly dense, it takes a while for air temperature to penetrate. So it may or may not be viable from the cold. At best, your odds of it being viable are lower.

I agree, that looks way too dirty to incubate. In a dirty egg bacterial can penetrate through the eggshell and infect the egg. I would not trust the bloom to be intact.

If you incubate first eggs you might get some to hatch. Might. Those first eggs are often not put together perfectly, maybe they have thin or thick shells, two or more yolks, no yolks, missing whites, or some other problem, some you cannot see when you crack the egg. If they are not pretty close to perfect they are less likely to hatch. Another problem I've had is that the first eggs are not always fertilized. Your drake may not have noticed that those eggs need to be fertilized or maybe she is avoiding him. The first eggs are typically pretty small compared to where they will be in a few weeks. That means the chicks that hatch are going to be fairly small.

I've hatched eggs from chicken pullets. Some do pretty well. But my overall hatch rates are lower than with eggs from older pullets and hens, sometimes dramatically and sometimes not much. I almost never have a hatched chick die. When I do it is likely one from a pullet egg. I've noticed that these problems seem to go away if I wait until the pullet has been laying for at least a month. The eggs are bigger and the pullet has had time to correct mistakes in putting the egg together.

I don't know where you found that egg. Most of my pullets start to lay in nests where the hens are laying. But sometimes I have a pullet that drops her egg wherever she may be, either from the roost or just walking around. Usually within a few days they gain control of the egg laying process enough that they can get to a nest before it pops out. That may help it stay cleaner.

For all these reasons I suggest you wait a month before you incubate any eggs. You are more likely to be successful.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

as further addendum, from experience:

Not only may a dirty egg result in failure from bacterial infestation, you can virtually guarantee that the eggs on either side of it in your incubator will also fail when it becomes a bacteria bomb. If that bomb cracks and leaks, not only does it smell terribly (I'm told), but I can almost guarantee that you will lose more eggs in the incubator than just those on either side.