Will refrigerated eggs hatch?

[drom]

I lost my best hen at the beginning of this month. She was absolutely gorgeous, laid very dark eggs and was a little pet to me; she was super sweet.

She had been laying fertile eggs for months but I hadn't hatched any out because I hadn't bought an incubator yet. Dumb. Anyway, I had about a dozen eggs that I thought could still be viable only three of them were hers that I knew for sure. I called the woman who sold me my stock originally and she said send them down to me. So I packed them up really well and mailed them down to Southern California so she could try to hatch them out in her cabinet incubator. I wasn't expecting anything because some of these eggs were old and some were from the refrigerator. but she just e-mailed me last night and I have 4 chicks; one hatched from the one of the three eggs I know were hers for sure.

Several of them were not probably older than 10 days, but I would say if you know someone who has a Sportsman incubator, or who is very experienced and has a good incubator, then give them to someone else to hatch for you. It's worth a try.

 

[Mrs MIA]

Perhaps there is a BYC member close to you that has an incubator you can borrow, or you could put a "wanted to borrow" ad on Craigslist.

 

[Akane]

Month old eggs with no incubator is probably not worth the trouble. You can pick up a bator for about $40 at most feed stores. Refrigerated eggs can definitely hatch and if the eggs are not going to be set for more than about 12 days you actually get a higher hatch rate if they have been refrigerated. I've had hatch rates in the 80percentile on eggs refrigerated for a week or 2. The length of time since they've been laid has more impact than whether they were in the fridge or not. When something was picking off my brown layers and I was down to all but 2 I did set some eggs that were from about 6weeks to 2 days old with majority being older and only about 2 being collected per day over the past week. All refrigerated during that time. I got a 50% hatch rate.