The 411 on Shipped Hatching Eggs

Is there anything more nerve wracking, yet joyful than actually incubating and hatching chicks?  I think not!

It’s bad enough when it is your own eggs.  Even plucked right from the nest box, there is still a nervous energy and a great deal of excitement in the waiting– watching for development, wondering how many will hatch, and in some cases, just what you’ll get from this or that cross, keeping a proper balance of temperature and humidity, and on top of it all, fear of the electric going out!

As if all those uncertainties weren’t enough, factor in getting them from another source, and even further! having them shipped to you! and it’s a whole new ball game.

There is at least one positive to having eggs shipped to you!  That is, you can get eggs for rare or hard to find breeds from anywhere, including breeds that are totally unavailable in your area!  But there are a lot of negatives too.  They are a gamble!  Whether the gamble of shipped eggs is worth it to you or not depends wholly on how badly you really want something!

What if they aren’t fertile?  How do you know how the eggs were stored before they were even shipped?  What if the eggs get lost in transit?? What about temperature extremes along their journey?  What if someone along the route from the seller’s post office to yours was….well….  a butt hole?

All the jostling along the journey, bouncing about in a truck, possible X-rays, changes in temperature, pressure, the possibility of a postal worker in a particularly bad mood….. the odds are against those fragile little eggs!

In other words, don’t expect great hatch rates from shipped eggs, even if they are fertile, even if the seller packages them well, because it doesn’t take a great deal to destroy the viability of those tiny cells you are hoping will produce a chick for you.  And after all the variables those tiny cells must face on their journey to you, they then must face the variables related to your particular environment and incubating practices.

Your rate of success will vary! It may be great one time and poor the next.  You may have generally good luck, but you may have generally bad luck and decide shipped eggs aren’t the route to go.  Whatever the case may be, a seller should be judged on their competence and how well they package their eggs, not your hatch rate.

Gawd, Lanette! Why are you being so negative!!! How discouraging!

It’s just fair warning!  You should be fully aware of the gamble you are taking and not expect that the 90% hatch rate you get from the eggs you pluck from your own nest or that you get when you buy eggs from Bob down the street is going to be the same.  Overly high expectations are unfair to sellers who get blamed when few to none hatch despite fertility and their efforts to get them to you safely.  Consider yourself lucky if you get 50%!

That said, I have done a little reading on recommendations for helping you get a higher hatch rate out of shipped eggs so I thought I would pass them along!

• It’s always best to get your hatching eggs locally, but if you can’t, shop around even for your shipped eggs.  The closer the seller is to your location, the better.
• Get to know the seller.  Look for recommendations and good feedback from others!
• When you receive your eggs, candle to check for detached or destroyed air sacks.  (Candling is using a high power light in a darkened room, placing it against the egg, to get a look at what is going on inside.  Just an FYI, you cannot use it to determine fertility.)  Those eggs that have been absolutely scrambled, get rid of.  The rest, including those with detached air cells, set pointy end down in an egg carton and allow them to settle and warm to room temperature.
• If air cells are intact, they should sit for at least 6 hours before you put them in the incubator.
• If air cells are detached, give them 24 hours to settle.  Even if the cell doesn’t reattach, it may still hatch, but they require special attention.  Instead of waiting 24 hours to begin turning, wait 2-3 days.  Instead of using an auto turner, keep the eggs in the bottom portion of a paper egg carton and place the entire thing in the incubator.  Tilt the carton ever so slightly by propping it up with whatever is handy.  When it’s time to turn the eggs again, remove the prop from one side, and simply prop the other side.  And instead of stopping turning on day 18, stop turning on day 16.
• Do not jostle your shipped eggs or over handle them, particularly those with detached air cells.  If you’re someone who candles a lot, you’ll want to avoid doing so if the eggs are shipped and the air cell is detached!  It is recommended that you keep candling down to two times, and that is it.
• Do not lay eggs with detached air cells on their sides!  They should stay in a more or less upright position!

Good luck on your egg hatching endeavors, local or otherwise!