Who has purchased eggs from ebay ? and what was your hatch rate ?

[Funky Chooks]

I'm happy to have found this thread. I'm new to this. Bought 4 bantam blue/black Coachin possible splash/frizzle eggs, received 5, and they are under my broody hen now, as of earlier today. I will be reading and following this thread. I hope I am doing everything correctly. Well, so far all I've done is give her the eggs after I marked them, and she accepted them happily. She is still in my henhouse, but later I will bring her inside, into a dog carrier so she can start to raise them alone, away from the others. I hope this is the proper/best method. But I'll be changing my methods depending on what you all tell me.

The seller packed the eggs very well, they look great. Depending on how the postal service handled them, my guess is around 50% hatch rate? But I have no idea what to expect. I was lucky and they arrived in only two days, but all the way from Texas, about 2k miles. :/ Well, wish me luck.

 

[scottmostl]

Good luck Funky Chooks. My White Ameraucanas are due to hatch tomorrow and I am feeling like an expectant father. I check them every hour looking for the first sign of pipping. Hope it works out for both of us. : )

 

[scottmostl]

Good luck Funky Chooks. My White Ameraucanas are due to hatch tomorrow and I am feeling like an expectant father. I check them every hour looking for the first sign of pipping. Hope it works out for both of us. : )

 

[horsebackjenn]

I know I'm new here and I hate to vent so boldy before anyone gets to know me, but I am so disgruntled with so many egg-shippers these days. Anytime I buy eggs, even on ebay, I ask them how they pack their eggs, then if I don't think its good enough, I offer an additional $10 on arrival, if they pack them to my instructions. It generally takes less than two minutes, so that equates to about $300/hour for less than two minutes of care that doesn't cost them anything, and more often than not, they don't care. Even the high dollar eggs, the shippers usually just don't care. So long as they can't be held accountable, because they "won't be responsible for Postal Mishandling", then you really just throw you good money out for bad. What does it take to get people to take just an ounce of pride in what they do???

I haven't been buying or selling for several years now, because I got so tired of being screwed out of money on hatching eggs. They wrap the eggs in bubble wrap and just toss them in a box, in all different direction, with either more bubble wrap or with packing peanuts. NO AIR CELL WILL STAY IN TACT IF THE EGG IS SHIPPED ON ITS SIDE!!! And they won't hatch with burst air cells...they lose moisture way to fast. I've received some like that today and I am just fuming...its not like I was asking her to go out of her way to do me a favor with nothing in return, I offered to PAY her for her 2 minutes of extra care.

The first time I shipped eggs, half of them broke. I felt so bad, but the gentleman gave me instructions on packing them and I sent him a new batch. I have been packing the same way every time since, and have only had to replace 2 eggs, and I guaranteed every single egg against cracking and I also guaranteed all air cells would be in tact. And it didn't cost me a thing to provide a little extra care in packing. I would use a sharpie to write the date and type of egg and told my buyers that if any broke, take a picture where my writting was clearly visible and I would replace it. If the air cells burst, they were instructed to send it back to me, packed in the exact same manor that I had, and I would replace it as soon as it was varified. I never had any returned....ever, and I never sent extras unless I just wanted to get rid of them.

In the 8th grade, my oldest son had a science project. The teacher told them to work in pairs, and in two days, each pair was to drop an egg off the "watch tower" of their school (about 3 stories tall), using only 3 items to keep the egg from braking. My son and his lab partners were the only team that passed. The class had eggs in all kinds of contraptions. My son and his partner, following my advice, used bubble wrap, an egg carton and a shoe box. I had my son add 5 more eggs to the project, and to chunck them as hard as he could..... just for the "awe" factor, and all 6 eggs were completely in tact with no cracks when they unpacked them. I may not be good at much, but by golly, I know how to pack eggs good enough to offer a 100% damage guarantee, even on the air cells. and to top it off, when I was shipping eggs, my clients had 89-100% hatch rates!!! I can't even get that on my own eggs!

Anyways, off my soap box with a deep breath and sigh. Maybe I can sleep now that I've got that off my chest lol. And you can check for yourselves....look at the air cells of your shipped eggs, and mark all the ones with air cells that move around or have bubbles in them. Mark them with a sharpie, so you can be sure and see it in 3 weeks. If any of them ever hatch, let me know so I can eat my words I've even had cracked eggs make it to hatching day and hatch successfully, but I've never had an egg with a burst air cell hatch... and rarely even make it more than 2 weeks in the incubator. They have to travel upright with the big end up during flight to keep the air cell in tact. Otherwise, you'll have better luck shipping them ground, and waiting a week to 10 days for arrival. (they sit longer than that in the next waiting for the hen to go broody anyways, so I don't hesitate to ship ground if the seller doesn't want to take the time to pack them to my instructions). Eggs to "scamble" all that easily. You really have to shake the heck out of them to ruin them, but if the air cell ruptures, you may as well throw them out.

 

[horsebackjenn]

Fingers typing too fast:.......They sit longer in the NEST (not 'next') and eggs DONT scarmble all the easily.

 

[roach56]

I can't keep my humidity below 35 and I've never added water ! I hope my 12 developers make it !

I keep mine at 50 percent and bump it up to 65 percent once the chicks are into air cell.

 

[roach56]

I just had two batches shipped to me from eBay purchases. I was skeptical about shipping fertile eggs because I've shipped for years and handlers are brutal. There's no way to keep a box oriented any certain way. You can mark it "this side up" and fragile but that doesn't mean much. I did hatch 10 out of 14 fertile and 9 out of 11 fertile. Would have never thought it was possible.

 

[horsebackjenn]

I just had two batches shipped to me from eBay purchases. I was skeptical about shipping fertile eggs because I've shipped for years and handlers are brutal. There's no way to keep a box oriented any certain way. You can mark it "this side up" and fragile but that doesn't mean much. I did hatch 10 out of 14 fertile and 9 out of 11 fertile. Would have never thought it was possible.

I have found that the handling is not what ruins hatching eggs, its the flight. You have to shake an egg pretty darn hard to ruin an egg. I worked for the park service just out of high school, and my job was to find nests of endangered and near endangered birds that had been hijacked by cow birds, shake the eggs that didn't belong, and I"d have too shake them pretty hard for it to be effective. If you just barely shake them, the birds still hatched. The reason this job existed was because when the cow birds hatch, they take all the food and the birds that belonged in the nest would starve, which was why the birds ended being on the list.

Also, you can see evidence of this every time you drop an egg and it spreads out in the floor....the yolk is still in tact and not scrambled. However, in an old egg, you can actually see the yolk spreading beyond the yolk sack when you drop it...that's what "scambled" is. Its a pretty brutal fall, but you can see that the yolk is not scrambled and mixed in with the "white" of the egg. I have dropped eggs that only cracked, and still have been able to hatch them and I have tossed eggs pretty hard (with the intent of busting them open), and I can still see some yolks still in tact (not many, but some). So I just don't buy that handling and tossing/tumbling will damage the eggs. After my son's "experiment" I described in my last post, I beleive you can drop-kick those boxes, and if the eggs are packed right, there will be no damage to the egg or to the air cell.

It is the flight in the airplane that ruins them. If they are laying on their sides or upside down, the air cell will burst, then the egg looses moisture too fast in the incubator to be able to hatch. I have even tried increasing humiditing, and it still hasn't worked. I've gotten them to the final 3-4 days, then they die, but most don't even last that long.

If selling eggs is just a hobby, and you're not living on the proceeds of every egg you produce, you can test this theory out for yourself. I throw out buckets of eggs every week for not having a place to put them, so its easy for me. Just drop an egg on the kitchen floor or the side walk and examine the yolk after. Then drop another one even harder, and see just how hard you have to drop an egg to disturb the yolk. If the eggs are packed right, the tossing and tumbling of a conveyor belt is not going to damage them.

 

[starlingdaly]

I JUST put my eBay eggs in the incubator yesterday and already I am confident I will get at least some to hatch. The eggs were packed well, each individually in bubble wrap placed in egg cartons pointy side down. Egg cartons were immobilized in a Priority Mail box that was well marked on which side was up and what was inside.
The last batch of eggs I ordered was from My Pet Chicken. I am still kicking myself over that purchase. I bought 6 BCM hatching eggs which cost me nearly $50. The eggs shipped 2 weeks late which I was fine with because you can't really predict how well a hen will lay in any given week. What got me was when they did arrive (after the tracking said "out for delivery" and it wasn't delivered, then updated to saying "notice left" which there wasn't) I opened the box to find the eggs were intact but shipped on their sides! The box was NOT well marked about what was inside and every single air cell was damaged. They did send a 7th egg.
I let all the eggs sit for 18-ish hours pointy side down before giving them to my broody turkey hen.
One week later, one egg has either exploded or been crushed (it disappeared with very little sign of what happened), 1 egg was rotten and smelly, and 1 egg shows signs of development...maybe.
I gave that egg to my broody silkie who is also on 5 guinea eggs.

So needless to say that was my first experience with shipped eggs and I am so mad at myself because I have learned a lot since then.
If I could redo, I'd incubate in an incubator with egg cartons for the first 18 days and also not buy such expensive eggs and instead try eBay for a quarter the price.
It was an expensive mistake. I did win an auction for a dozen BCM eggs for $22 so I will give it another go and hope for the best.
I may give some of my current eBay eggs to my broody halfway through incubation if the air cells are completely attached. So far so good.
We are constantly learning!

 

[Ms Steak]

Well. 5 of my silkie eggs are progressing nicely. 1 stopped. I can`t tell if the marans are doing anything. Far to dark for me to see. My firzzle polish, day 3 yesterday, and I couldn`t resist a quick look. 3 are fertile, but I will give the others till day 10.