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- #21
Quote:
I'm not assuming any one cause of poor hatches.
Since the hatch rate with my own eggs is very high, and my hatch rate with shipped eggs has been very low, I think that that means either A) The eggs were damaged in shipping, or B) the eggs were duds to begin with, or possibly, in the case of developing, but dying part way through incubation, or even just before or during hatch, it could be C) lethal gene reinforcement causing a high mortality rate, or D) poor health of breeding stock. Or some other factor I haven't thought of.
If a seller has less than 50% hatch rate, on average, and another seller of the same breed has 75-99% successful hatch rate, guess who's eggs I'd rather buy? Even if I end up with only 10%, that's ten% better than I've gotten on 4 out of 5 shipments.
If I only buy from people with a high hatch rate in the eggs they sell and ship, I think it would improve the odds of getting a good hatch. If I buy from sellers whose eggs often don't hatch, I think that would just continue my throwing away money on eggs to put in my incubator for 3 weeks and then watch them not hatch.
The 3 breeds I'm trying to get shouldn't be all that hard to hatch. They aren't really hard-to-hatch breeds. As far as I know, anyway.
We all tend to look at what goes on with our own birds, and expect similar conditions with other people's birds. We let our own experience color our expectations. It doesn't always work out that way, though.
I'm not assuming any one cause of poor hatches.
Since the hatch rate with my own eggs is very high, and my hatch rate with shipped eggs has been very low, I think that that means either A) The eggs were damaged in shipping, or B) the eggs were duds to begin with, or possibly, in the case of developing, but dying part way through incubation, or even just before or during hatch, it could be C) lethal gene reinforcement causing a high mortality rate, or D) poor health of breeding stock. Or some other factor I haven't thought of.
If a seller has less than 50% hatch rate, on average, and another seller of the same breed has 75-99% successful hatch rate, guess who's eggs I'd rather buy? Even if I end up with only 10%, that's ten% better than I've gotten on 4 out of 5 shipments.
If I only buy from people with a high hatch rate in the eggs they sell and ship, I think it would improve the odds of getting a good hatch. If I buy from sellers whose eggs often don't hatch, I think that would just continue my throwing away money on eggs to put in my incubator for 3 weeks and then watch them not hatch.
The 3 breeds I'm trying to get shouldn't be all that hard to hatch. They aren't really hard-to-hatch breeds. As far as I know, anyway.
We all tend to look at what goes on with our own birds, and expect similar conditions with other people's birds. We let our own experience color our expectations. It doesn't always work out that way, though.
