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

[oesdog]

This year
Yes I agree ours were not best packed. The first 6 eggs that were supposed to be silver grey dorkings arrived in a very bad state.
These eggs were also Blue in colour and Silver grey Dorkings lay white eggs????? NOT the correct eggs.
Out of the 6 eggs
1 was completely broken.
1 was stuck to the packing and broke when we tried to get it out despite gentle care.
1 was found to be totally fractured during candling and had to be waxed.
the other 3 seemed to be fine. We left them to sit for 24 hrs and set those 4 eggs. Waited 21 days Nothing.
eventually we eggtopsied them and found 3 with slow cooked scrambled egg and 1 with just a yellow yolk inside.
6 eggs zero hatch!

Second try. 6 white eggs arrived in the post. THese were in an egg carton with tissue paper but again doubtful if the packaging prevented damage.
These eggs were white. - it remains to be confirmed if they are indeed dorkings?
out of the 6 eggs.

3 had just yolk inside.
2 had fully formed dead chicks
1 had a live chick that needed a hatch assist as its leg was stuck to the back of its head. This was very difficult to free and burst a vein.
This pic shows how much membrane we needed to remove to free the foot. It could not zip in that possition. The chick filled the entire shell and would not have been able to move and free itself.



Out of 12 eggs we got 1 live chick.
We then had to go get it a day old buddy from a friend. The chick on the top of the lego is the one from the egg in the first pic.
The buddy is the one on the ground.


- the hatch was needless to say disapointing.
We have bought eggs on Ebay twice before. out of those
6 eggs cream legbars - none hatched.
9 eggs mixed - only 2 hatched and both needed assistance, they were late hatch Maran and legbar both roosters.

All in all a very disapointing hatch rate here.

Oes

 

[GeorgRodway]

Very interesting pictures ! This chick you assisted with the trapped foot did he survive ?

 

[starlingdaly]

I feel so bad for you, oesdog. It's terrible to be met with bad luck time after time.

 

[SeaHen]

I've gotten eggs through eBay 3 times and my hatch rates were overall good. I had a 100% hatch on 8 Silkie eggs several years ago, and I believe 6 out of 8 Ameraucana eggs. This spring I got 12 Ancona duck eggs, which by the way were exquisitely packaged and in perfect condition, and only 4 made it to hatch. One was infertile, 3 quit early, 3 quit midway and 1 died after pipping. I've had similar results hatching my own chicken, duck and goose eggs; in other words, I think sometimes it's the luck of the draw. If there is anyone to blame for poor results in my case it would be me, definitely not the seller/shipper. I would buy eggs this way again, but I agree that reading consumer feedback and knowing the seller's reputation is the only way to go.

 

[starlingdaly]

Agreed, SeaHen! Though there are so many variables, I wouldn't even blame yourself if they don't all hatch in the end.

 

[oesdog]

Very interesting pictures ! This chick you assisted with the trapped foot did he survive ?

The chick in the egg - IS the live chick on top of the lego in the brood box 2nd pic. We went out and got him a friend - because all the others died. Yes he lived. But he would never have been able to ziip. His leg and foot were across his throat and round his head. He managed to pip but could never have zipped the shell. The foot was literally stuck to his head. It was hard to free him and that is why the top of the shell was taken off completely. He is actually laying inside the shell in that pic. He is the entire size of the shell so there was no way he could have manuvered to free himself. He bleed a lot from the vein that ran from the head down the leg - You can see the edge of the vein running round the knee joint of that foot at the edge of the membrane. We left him in the shell. After a while he turned over and got up. There was no blood under him at all. His yolk sac was empty and dark but it was stuck to the inside of the shell so I pulled it gently away from the shell so he wouldn;t pull on it and hurt himself, and left it attached to him. - it was still attached for a bit, but when I checked him at 2am it had fallen off on its own only a few hours later. It was all dried up anyhow so I don;t think much was left in there.. He was hatched on DAY 24 so would have used much of it up in the shell. He is now doing really well and gaining strength everyday. The little friend he now has was from a local man we know. He found that chick out in the cold without the hen - he couldn't figure which nest it should have been in and so he had it in a bator to warm it up. We turned up out of the blue and asked if he had any day old chicks! - Funny thing is they were both exactly the same size and colour though different breed - ours is supposed to be a silver grey Dorking - not sure what adopted chick is yet??



Here he is perfectly alive and doing well - see he even climbs already!

Oes

 

[GeorgRodway]

Soooooooo cute ! Beautiful well at least he has a friend !!! He seems too look like he's a fighter bless good luck, are you planning on getting any more ?

 

[SeaHen]

Thanks Starling. It is hard to lose them under any circumstances, but we live and learn

 

[kodster]

I buy from e-bay often. I really do watch the feed back though. You can tell which ones are doing well. I watch for the follow up feed back too. And, I take note of how the seller handles things that go wrong..are they nice? Or are they little stinks, blaming the buyer for Not letting them know before they posted a follow up, which is hard to believe, but I'm sure sometimes folks don't. But I see that a lot. Don't buy from them. I want a nice transaction. More often than not, I get them.
The eggs go though so much. I once had my Post Man tell me that they are often put on belts. Think about it he says. There they go, down the belt, to a bin that has been placed at the end for them to drop into. Well, if the bin was just emptied..replaced, the eggs have a long drop, plus, they are having other boxes dropped on top of them. But, it the eggs are going into a bin that has been there a while, and mostly full, they don't drop far, and don't have many other boxes falling hard on them. That was an interesting thought. The P.O. people get blamed a lot, but a lot of times it's out of their hands..literally. They use the belts, or, they have to pull a box once in a while for X-ray. Yes, there are those that don't handle them too carefully once they are in their hands. Poor eggs don't have much of a chance whether you buy from e-bay or from here, or a hatchery. It's a miracle we get any to hatch.

Another key component of whether the eggs arrive safely is the way they are packed by the seller. If not done right, then yes, you're going to have embryos (yes, they are still developing, once they are fertilized, but the growth is slowed down when their temps are kept low, which is what happens when they're shipped) are going to go through a lot of stress, the air cells are knocked loose, the yolks get scrambled, etc. The more stress the embryos go through in shipping, the more likely they're not going to make it to lockdown, let alone hatch. Check out The Great Egg Shipping Experiment thread for more information on how eggs should be shipped properly for more success. You can request the eBay seller to pack your order according to your instructions, to ensure safe delivery of the eggs. Not saying that USPS isn't responsible for their share of damage, but it can be minimized by proper packing, too.

I ordered four different orders off eBay, 3 weeks ago... got the different shipments on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Let them set until I got all four shipments in, and they were 7 days old when I set them 2 weeks ago, today. Out of the 52 total that I set, I have 30 in the bator, all developing nicely, and it's day 14 today. I have two that still have detached air cells, so they're sitting upright, fat end up, in a tray.. the rest are laying on their sides, because I had too many to use the auto turner (I have a Hovabator 1588). I have Lavender Orpingtons, Double-Barred English Lemon Cuckoo Orpingtons, Black Copper Marans, and Ameraucanas in there. All four shippers did an excellent job of packing their eggs, but different methods. Very similar to each other, however. I also have 18 American Bronze turkey eggs waiting to go in, after this hatch, and all 18 made it here, intact... shipped fat end up, individually wrapped in bubble wrap, and tucked into a box, 9 per layer, so that they supported each other. These came directly from the breeder in Wisconsin. My chicken eggs came from all over, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, and I'm in North Dakota. So, we shall see what comes of this. This is actually my second hatch... my first was 25 Rhode Island Red Heritage birds, and only one pipped, then shrunk wrapped, that came from a breeder in South Carolina, but not off eBay... someone I met on Facebook, whose reputation is impeccable.

 

[kodster]

Yes 3 times a day I did have day where forgot the midday turn as was out seeing to the cows and forgot

x

It depends on which of the three weeks you were turning them in. It appears that the first week and the third week is not so critical as the second week, to turn the eggs. The second week, you MUST turn them a minimum of 3x a day, preferably more, and make sure that you do it an odd number of times, never an even number of times.