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

[kodster]

It's day 14 and I'm not sure

arghhhhh

of the 3 remaining white silkie eggs from the batch of 10 I ordered 2 I know have died they have a horrible red circle round them so I'm left with 1

but the chick should surely move freely with the egg as I move it x.

By the time it gets to day 14, there's not much room left for the chick to move around in... you'll see mostly dark area by this point.

 

[Paulaann]

I purchase eggs quite often through eBay. I find the the closer to your location the better the hatch rate. The more common the bird the better the rate. Everyone seems to blame the USPS for your results, but it really matters about the care taken into shipping --i.e. bubble wrap, not a sliver of paper towel inside an egg carton; a USPS standard shipping box, not one that was laying around the house; fresh eggs not ones the picked before the auction even started (Just to name a few problems) Sometimes I'm very happy and other times I am very disappointed. I've run the whole gamut of eBay and believe me it is NOT always the USPS that should be blamed. I always say every year that the next time I will just buy chicks but then I miss the hatch. Just can't win all the time.

 

[Tammy N]

Wow, Tammy, that's a pretty bad experience!
4-H: I am new to this, but so far it's been either no development or at least around 80%.
It might also be be a good thread for ranting about the postal service's care of parcels.

I bought some eggs from Zanna and That was an awesome Deal she was more then honest and Fair My lack of knowledge on my leahy i am blaiming for loosing my wellies though as i had the marans above the heating area 3 drawers up and they where only 1 might of fried them not sure but was really happy with my marans turn out . If your looking I trust her 100% and not the turkey lady who sent me poop in the mail. as Turkey eggs

 

[Tammy N]

Every one has had such different experiences. Some good some bad. I think the main factors are, how they are packed. An egg carton& tissue paper just doesn't cut it for me, my 10 silkie eggs were packed this way and only 3 showed any development amd only 1 has made it to lockdown. they need to be packed properly in proper polystyrene boxes made for the purpose of shipping eggs, which a batch of light sussex eggs and wellsummers bought from ebay came in. 5 out of 6 light sussex developed and 3 have made it to lockdown, and 6 out of 6 welsummers developed 4 have made it to lockdown. The age of the egg needs to be taken into concideration as some sellers sell old eggs, which i havent experienced personally but so many f you have. Finally fertility, some sellers obviously don't check their fertility often enough and could possible send infertile eggs.
So many things can go wrong !

the honesty of the sales Person and Shipper means a lot as well,.

 

[pickitfarm]

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 ou

It seems to me if you are offering to pay for them to be shipped a specific way they would take you up on it, even if they thought they knew what they are doing. Since you seem to be very experienced in shipping your eggs, I know that they would love to hear from you on The Great Shipping Experiment forum. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/738943/the-great-egg-shipping-experiment/1190#post_11331598 This is a very long thread that has been going on for months. You could give some insight to everyone trying to successfully ship their eggs and their receipients. Hope to see you there.

I am not shipping anything myself but it is helping to know what to look for and getting to know others who are into hatching eggs.

 

[pickitfarm]

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

I followed your story on the May Hatch-a-Long OES Dog. Glad to see Eggbert(a) is doing so well. S/he had a hard entry into the world but it was successful because of you!

 

[johnkels]

I have bought a lot of eggs from eBay. I now expect only poor fertility rates in some cases none. Thought it was all down to me, if I get 30% fertile after 6 days I am doing great. It is an expensive was of building stock up but what else can one do. I have collected eggs from breeders and they have been up to 100% fertile.I consider the seller and buyer should be equally responsible, we know the pitfall of buying through the post and don't expect 100%. Sellers should also take into account the post difficulties, and replace eggs on return they can mark them, after all if it wernt for the post they would have a lot of eggs unsold. I have recently contacted a seller who willingly replaced eggs, that he marked The replaced eggs were still less then 50% gettingt this result as far as I am concerned is good and a shared responsibility..

 

[pickitfarm]

I am on my second hatch of shipped eggs. The first was purchased from rarebreedauction.com. These were poorly packaged. Two were broke and leaking out of the box. Even the Postmaster said he received alot of eggs through the years and that had to be worst he had seen. One had a serious crack in the egg when candled. The rest had wonky air cells. Needless to say not one even developed. The seller agreed to replace after we told him what happened. When I contacted him to have him ship, he told me that he lost most of his flock to predation while he was in the hospital. That was a full loss. We did have Rhodebar eggs that we got from the same auction site but these were picked up directly from the breeder. 12 received, 8 hatched and still going strong and they are close to 4 weeks old. I have SFH eggs in the incubator that were shipped. They were well wrapped but still lost two from breakage. DH does not like to handle them alot when incubating them so they have not been candled since they were put in. He will candle before lockdown which is Thursday evening. This time around, instead of removing from turner and placing on their sides, we are going to put them in modified egg cartons. I have heard alot of people on the forums doing that and have had alot of success. We have Ameraucana eggs too in there but they were local.

 

[Sonja73]

I buy and sell on E-Bay all the time. There are things that I look for when buying...
1. Pictures of the breeding flock--Do they look healthy? Are they cramped in cages? Are their surroundings clean?
2. The Rooster to hen ratio. 3 hens to a rooster is ideal. Speaking of this, if someone claims to have 3 hens, yet in their history they are selling a dozen every 2 days?? Do the math.
3. Distance. This places a huge roll in the hatch rate. The closer they are, the better hatch rate. Of course this isn't always true, just something I look for.
4. I have experimented with shipping, Expedited vs. Priority. Priority packages are handled differently, a lot rougher handling. I have 90-100% hatch rate on Expedited every time.
5. How they are packaged. Eggs need to breath. I look for Sellers that don't wrap their eggs in a bunch of plastic and tape.
6. Do they wash/mark their eggs? I personally do not wash my eggs, they don't need it-my coops are clean. If there is writing it should be done in pencil-as light and as little as possible.

As far as responsibility of hatch rates is concerned, remember to look for the things above. Not only think about rough handling by USPS but also the fact they x-ray. The only time I have had broken eggs is when I shipped them the buyer insisted I marked the box; "Fragile! Live Hatching Eggs! Handle with Care!". 2 of 14 were broken and the outside box was creased in on 2 corners. I double box my eggs, one smaller box with the eggs wrapped in paper towels inside the egg carton-pointy side down-surrounded by crumpled newspaper packed tight, then sealed and placed into a larger box packed with crumpled/shredded newspaper.

Hatch rate with shipped eggs:
10-30%--Good
30-50%--Great
50%+--Excellent

With that said-
Reading some of your stories made me want to ship some of my eggs to you, so you would see it can be fun!

 

[GeorgRodway]

Day 19 I have a pip is this normal ?