Who's setting with me Sept 1st-4th?

[Lesalynn]

I wish I could find good quality Silkie eggs locally, I'm not crazy about trying to hatch shipped eggs either. It is a huge gamble. No matter how well the seller packages the eggs, and assuming they are all fertile, and no matter how good you are at incubating, we have absolutely no power over what they go thru during the shipping process. I think it's that 2-3 days they spend being jostled around, or sitting God-knows-where with temp/humidity fluctuations from here to kingdom come that mess themm up. That being said, I swore I wouldn't purchase shipped eggs after my last ones (a year ago). But.....I just did it again, lol. When I get home from deer camp, I am going to work on putting together a swap page, I have been checking several of them out, and you'd be surprised at the people here with SQ eggs in their swap page that aren't out to break a person trying to get a few. Lots of these swaps just cost you the shipping, the eggs themselves are free. I have 3 different shipments coming in the future consisting of: pure Silkies (only cost me $15), Silkie/Sizzles (only costing me 24+ Jumbo white quail eggs), and EE/OE/CE (only cost me 12 Jumbo white quail eggs. Well, my quail gave me the eggs, so I think just having to pay to ship them out in exchange for eggs I really really wanted is a huge bargain. I'm gonna stick with the swapping, I think is gonna be my best bet.

Don't give up, just try and find a way to get your eggs at a better price.

 

[cochins1088]

I wonder how much more it would be if I requested one day shipping. If it's $15 more, that might be worth it to get a good hatch. I imagine they would have less handling that way. Maybe if I buy them again, I could request to pick them up at the post office too. Any other ideas?

 

[cochins1088]

And I looked at a couple swaps yesterday, they sound like a bargain, but my birds aren't SQ. They have good characteristics, but also right now, all of the colors of cochins are mixed together. I figured once I get these to hatch, I will start separteing them out into different coops, I already have a plan drawn out. But from what I read, if you don't have SQ to swap, you won't recieve SQ birds back. And I am looking for some really nice birds.

 

[Noncentzter]

If you join mrheinz77's monthly swap, you don't have to have SQ Pure birds...you can do mixed breed...just a thought...and all you're out is postage to ship your eggs to your partner.

 

[Lesalynn]

Most of the swaps will take Paypal as the swap. Lots of the participants are perfectly ok with using a $15-$20 Paypal in lieu of eggs as the swap.

 

[Sweetlilbaby]

I wonder how much more it would be if I requested one day shipping. If it's $15 more, that might be worth it to get a good hatch. I imagine they would have less handling that way. Maybe if I buy them again, I could request to pick them up at the post office too. Any other ideas?

I ordered eggs off e-bay in the spring. First hatch was botched. Nothing happened. Eggs all rotted. The person I ordered from actually contacted me after 25 days of shipping them to check on the hatch. For price of shipping she sent another dozen. It was nice of her. The second set of them only 5 hatched. Out of 12 only 8 of them were fertile. one started to hatch then just stopped.
That is why I'm taking my chances on eggs from a co-op. I know they are refrigerated, But I spent $11 shipping on the other eggs plus cost of eggs. This way no shipping. Only paid $5 a dozen. If they don't hatch i'm only out $10, if I can get out of 2 dozen at least 3 to hatch then it's worth it. Then they'd be cheaper then buying chicks already hatched

 

[cochins1088]

Ya, these are from e-bay. I just don't know where to find birds like these. I know I can just get some hatchery chicks and right now, it's looking a lot cheeper, but I'd rather get some quality birds. What breed are you hatching?

 

[Sweetlilbaby]

Ya, these are from e-bay. I just don't know where to find birds like these. I know I can just get some hatchery chicks and right now, it's looking a lot cheeper, but I'd rather get some quality birds. What breed are you hatching?

The ones I got from ebay were supposed to be silkie mix. They weren't! The current breed is unknown. It's just to see if they'll hatch or not. And kind of be surprised. a friend of my husbands has purebred silkies and purebred cochins. We hatched eggs from him in early summer. They were mainly roosters, he refrigerated them. I said no more from him because it was to hard to tell the sex. two of the ones i gave my mom as pullets are now crowing.

 

[cochins1088]

I trust that mine are truly Silver Laced Cochin Bantams, she has a lot of breeding pens and each egg is marked in pen which breeding pen they came from. I really like the parents of these eggs, I'm hoping I was wrong with the day 3 candling and that at least 3 of those eggs are developing, the only ones that appeared to be developing were the 3 I put in from my hens.

 

[Sweetlilbaby]

I trust that mine are truly Silver Laced Cochin Bantams, she has a lot of breeding pens and each egg is marked in pen which breeding pen they came from. I really like the parents of these eggs, I'm hoping I was wrong with the day 3 candling and that at least 3 of those eggs are developing, the only ones that appeared to be developing were the 3 I put in from my hens.

on day 4 i candled my eggs and only 1 had anything forming in it. day 8 I candled and 4 have obvious veins. Typically I wont candle til day 10 for the first time. This time i'm to excited and curious to leave the eggs alone.
Hopefully you'll have better luck with yours than i've had with mine so far.