You can't store hatching eggs like that!!!!

We've all heard the war stories about hatching eggs, they have to be kept at exactly XX temp and turned XX times daily and can't be kept but XX days before setting and NEVER EVER wash them blah blah blah blah.................


rather then type out a 4 page detailed description i'll trim it down, my daughter got us back into the hatching game about a year ago, a few months ago i dug out the old Sportsman 1500, gave it a good cleaning and going over then got it dialed in. as a test run (it had been in storage for over 15 yrs) i also wanted to test out some of the You can't do this and that's with hatching eggs hoopla. the eggs i set had been collected from the nest and were intended as eating/selling eggs, brought to the kitchen sink, ran under cold water and scrubbed with a scotch bright pad, dried with a towel, placed in foam cartons big end up and directly into the fridge with the temp measured accurately at 37° F, four dozen eggs, youngest were 3 weeks old, oldest 4 weeks old (from a slow sell period). when removed and sat at room temp they started to condensate so rather then let the condensation accumulate on them i placed them into the incubator at 2300hrs on the 11th of November. with their temp i figured an expected hatch date of 03 December. of the 48 eggs, 44 developed and went into lockdown, of those 40 hatched starting on the 1st of December and wrapping up mid day the 2nd so a 90% hatch rate


one interesting thing..........these eggs came from my daughters flock, she has two roosters, one a VERY large mixed and a very tiny red Cochin bantam, usually there's about a 50/50 split on Who's that baby daddy but on this batch it's about a 90/10 split...........she has another batch in her Hova-bator with an expected hatch date of the 7th Dec, it'll be interesting to see if that batch has the same split.

 

i think the only way i could of made it more worse case would of been to ship them to myself.

 

I can honestly stay i figured with them being in the fridge at that temp and for that long that the hatch rate would not have been all that great, my daughters batch of 18 viable eggs went into lock down yesterday morning, i have 112 quail eggs that just went into lockdown after making the above post, 104 more quail eggs locking down on the 11th and while we were wrapped up at the farm Wednesday the eggs at home in my daughters flock didn't get collected and when i went to do it last night her buff Cochin bantam hen has gone broody and decided to try and set on all the eggs that accumulated Wed/Thu so........i took all the eggs, marked 4 and gave them back to her, went to collect what the other girls laid with her just a few ago and she had a fit, but settled back down with her 4....................Chicken Math