Hatching Shipped Eggs

How to hatch shipped eggs is a common question. Do they require special needs? They do! Together we will walk through some wisdom and common tips to help you be most successful!

• Transcript

  Hey poultry nerds. We are back today with a listener request. We're starting to get more of those and that makes it easy and exciting to come up with subjects. I mean, I'm gonna be honest, I really enjoy doing the podcast, but sometimes. Like the hardest part about it is what do we talk about? Yes. So anytime you guys need answers, feel free to message us or email us or whatever. You know, scream out the back door if you want to and let us know what it is that you need to know and we will research it and get back to you. And look, there's a great chance. That we will reply to your email or whatever message, smoke signal or whatever really quickly and give you that answer. Mm-hmm. But that's also a great idea for a future podcast because if you're curious, chances are a lot of other people are too. Yes. So today's request is how to hatch shipped eggs. They do that. Well, I mean, I've shipped a few this year, so it's possible to hatch out shipped eggs. There are some nuances to it, so we're gonna kind of go through this step by step. And I have an outline and we'll see if we can stick to it. I think we can. I bet we don't. Well, but I mean, there's some interesting stories behind some of these. That we've gotten and you know, I've seen a lot of stuff on some of the groups and there's one that, I'm not gonna mention its name, but it's primarily a chicken group. And like some of the stuff people say is just really outlandish and they're like, I'm an expert. Mm-hmm. I have a veterinarian background, like I look at your Facebook history for the last I. Four years you have a dog. Not sure how that relates to poultry or etching shipped eggs or whatever, but. I appreciate you. I think this is one of those things that social media added to Amazon. On demand stuff, you can become an expert pretty quickly and, and incubating eggs takes some practice. I mean, it took me. It took me a couple years. I mean, I started with garbage incubators and worked my way up to what I have now and an incubator. Quality plays a huge role in, in being successful. I mean, there's, there's lots of keys. My favorite post, what, and I love this. What's the best incubator I can get? For under$50 and I'm like, in the world of incubators, the best and under$50 aren't in the same sentence. There may be a 50 with one or two digits in front of it. You know, you could work with that. There's a caveat there though, if you understand the process and you have experience. You could incubate in a cheap incubator. You can, and I've done it successfully. Like I, a lot of people give me crap for my$75 van popups, but you know, when Terry showed us how to use that on C Turner's corner, I was like, Hey, here's a cheap one for projects. I can use this for small batch test hatching because you know, the way I look at it. If a lot of my customers are using something like this, then you know, if I put a set of eggs in it every so often and try it, then that lets me know, Hey, I don't need my, let's not admit how much we spend on our incubators. This one will work. So I use that for testing and if you follow the instructions that come with it. For some that might be a crazy stretch. Be careful, but because when I got this Van Poppo, it was, you know, they come to the the styrofoam and my first thought was, let me chunk it. But if you actually read the instructions, it tells you to set it over the dome because it helps insulate it so it can regulate the temperature and the humidity better. So, I mean, I know as guys for us to read instructions, it's kind of tough sometimes and there weren't any pictures with it, but. You ordered some eggs, they arrived. What do you do? Well, let's back up for just a minute'cause there's a lot more that goes into play there than just ordering some eggs from Yahoo on eBay. Which I'm on eBay, so you know, I'm a Yahoo too. Okay, so first of all, you've got to make sure that the breeder you're ordering from has the proper genetics and that you're comfortable that they know what they're talking about, that they feed their breeders proper nutrition, because the chick is going to grow with the nutrition in the egg yolk. Mm-hmm. And if they don't have what they need, they're not gonna grow well. How is the shipper shipping the eggs? How are they packaging them? Because if they're putting them in a Ziploc bag, in a bubble envelope, just, you know, send us that money in that tip jar because that's about as good as it's gonna get right there. And I have seen, oh, what about packing used in a regular egg card, like what you get from the grocery store with packing peanuts or saw dust? I've seen one. I've seen wood shavings. Somebody said I had a bad hatch rate and I don't know why. And I was like, show us pictures of the process. And they were like, well, when I got the eggs, they looked like this and then this and this and this. They showed some pictures of candle and stuff and I was like you ordered the problem is the way those things were shipped. I don't, because like when I read it, everything the person did. They, they did, right? But they ordered eggs that were shipped in an egg carton and sawdust. So assuming that you were satisfied with the previous checklist of genetics, nutrition, and shipping methods, now the eggs have been turned over to the post office or UPS, but you're not supposed to ship'em. UPS. So are they thrown, are they jostled? Do they go up in a plane? Do they go over a mountain because altitude matters? And what is the temperature? Because they're not teleported from, say, my barn to your kitchen. They actually go in a truck and we see commercials this time of year. You know, don't leave your dog in the car, your baby in the car because the car temperature can go up. I think they're saying 40 degrees now. When I was a kid it was like 20 or 30 degrees. So let's just say today it was a hundred here, so that means it's 140 in the back of a semi truck. Going down the road. So are your eggs, you know, protected from that 140 degree heat going down the road? Or in January when the Arctic freezes come through, did the eggs get frozen while they were going down the road? So you've got to get temperature into play on that. So you've got a lot of things happening to those eggs before you ever put your hands on them. Yeah. Yeah. And were they, I think a lot of people say that if you get a hatch rate over 50% on hatched on shipped eggs, then you should consider yourself doing good. Yes. I believe that that is the industry standard at this point. I think for a while people just said that, but the more I pay attention, I think 50% is the average. And honestly, that's because sh hatching shipped eggs is from zero to a hundred, so the middle is 50. Yeah. Yeah. Kinda makes sense. If I ship some eggs to you. You're one state over then, you know, I may wind up with a 75 or 80% hatch rate, but if I shipped some eggs to somebody that say, lived in Washington State, they, they probably did go through an X-ray machine. They probably did go through an altitude change on an airplane because I would ship them to where they would need to get there within one or two days. Or, you know, they're in the back of an 18 wheeler for a really long period of time, so they kind of already started the incubation process. Well, and that was something else that I skipped over. Um, how old are the eggs when they're shipped out? Yeah. So you've gotta keep all of those things in mind. Supposedly that viability starts dropping at 10 days. We should aim for seven days. That does not mean at day 10, they're breakfast. Eggs. That just simply means that your chances are starting to get slimmer and slimmer of having good, healthy chicks become hatched. That's what that simply means. Okay, so let's just say all of that and now you've got your eggs in your hot little hand. Okay. If it's winter time, and this is gonna go for any species, if it is winter time and it is cold outside, you are going to set the eggs pointy side down at room temperature for 12 ish hours. You're bringing them. Up to room temperature slowly. That's the point of this. You've got an air cell in the top fat end of that egg, which we're gonna talk about more in just a minute, and you're kinda letting the eggs acclimate where they got, maybe got cold in during shipping, you know that kind stuff then. And sometimes like I've seen eggs that the box looked like they got bored at the terminal and played soccer with them. So you're gonna want the A cells to come back together and be solid again before you stick them in the incubator if you can. Yeah. Now if it's hot like it is right now, incubate. It's very possible the incubation has started inside the truck. Think about it, it's a hundred degrees. Okay? So what you're gonna wanna do is you're gonna wanna take those eggs and put them in the incubator with the turner off for the 12 hours. Yep. Because you're still settling the egg because you, because you're setting it without the turner, but you're not cooling it to room temperature and then gonna try to incubate it. It is already started in the a hundred degree truck, or a hundred degree plus truck. Now you're going to put it right back in the incubator. Leave the turner off. Okay? And talk about Turner's for a minute. This is gonna, this might offend somebody, you know? I mean, sometimes people don't like the truth. Okay. I am convinced 100% the eggs need to be rotated, not rolled. Now, I'm going to go back for just a minute. If it's your own eggs, I don't care. Do whichever you want to. If you are buying, shipped eggs, they need to be. Rotated like tipped, not rolled, like on their side and the machine goes around in a circle. I just, and that's gonna come back into play when we talk about the air cells. But if you are in the market to buy an incubator because you're going to order shipped eggs. Get one where the eggs stand up, pointy side down instead of rolled like in a circle. They come both ways. I don't wanna mention name brands. I don't know that it matters. Can we talk about name brands on here? I mean, ain't nobody sponsoring us. Okay, so if you're doing shipped eggs, don't do an HI 360. If you're gonna do something like the Maddie Kix or the CIAs or the hatching times or something where the eggs stand up in an egg rack or a cradle, something along those lines. Okay, now let's talk about the detached air cells. Now you guys are gonna have homework today. If you have never done this, you need to do it, especially do it with your kids. It's interesting. All right. I want you to take an egg that you're going to eat and candle it, and it can be a fresh egg, but one that's like a week or two or even older would be easier or do both if you have access to both. Um, so you bought from the store? Sure. Like three months old. Sure. Okay, so when you candle it, what you're going to see in the fresh egg, like from this morning egg, is you're not really gonna see a whole lot. It's just gonna be kind of clear. You are not really gonna see an air cell, it's just an egg, right? Yeah. Okay. If you get one that's like. Store bought egg, it's a couple months old. You're gonna see an air shell at the top because as the, this is where the science is gonna come in. So as the egg ages, it loses moisture and the egg shell breathes air, oxygen, carbon dioxide moves through that air that eggshell. So that membrane will shrink as the moisture is lost and you end up with the air shell at the top. That's how it gets there. Right? Okay. So when you candle it, you are going to see it and it's gonna be about the size of a teaspoon maybe. It's not gonna be huge. It's gonna be kind of small. Yeah. All right. Now after you've seen it, you can even draw a line to around it. If you've never done this before, the line with the pencil can actually be useful, um, around the air cell. And you're gonna notice when you tilt the egg, it doesn't move. It stays in the fat end. That's very important to the homework part. Okay. Now, after you're, you've seen it all, you, you understand where the air cell is and everything. Now, I want you to take that egg and I want you to shake the fire out of it. I want you to play the, what are those things that you shake and you're doing the, I can't remember what they're called. Caracas? Yeah, something like that. Pretend you, pretend that you've got, what'd you say? Caracas? Yeah, Mor Rock, MOOCs something. So shake those things. I don't know. A good 10 seconds. Okay. Shake it like a salt shaker. There you go. Salt shaker, and then candle it again. That is a detached egg air cell. I mean a detached air cell. So you're gonna see bubbles, you're gonna see probably a couple, three big bubbles. Um, if it slides all the way down on the side of the egg, that's called a saddled airbag, uh, air cell on the side and. That has damaged the egg to probably to the point where it won't incubate at all. Because that's, and that's why I said do one that you're gonna eat for breakfast.'cause you just scrambled it. Mm-hmm. But now you understand you have a visual of what you're looking for. So now you take your shipped eggs and you're gonna very carefully candle them. We are not shaking them like a salt shaker. Or the word that we can't remember what it is. And so if it's in the fat end and it doesn't move when you very gently rotate the egg. Now remember, let's go back to candle for just a second. When you candle eggs, you always candle them pointy side down. Do not use. The Candler on the incubator because the very first thing you have to do to use it is turn the egg upside down. And that's wrong. I don't know why they put those on there. It aggravates me. So use a, I have an electric Candler, but use anything if you're in a dark room, it's not hard to see. But always candle and egg point inside down. You don't want to disturb the air cell, the yolk, any of those, anything inside that egg any more than it already has been during shipping. Okay, so now you're candling it and you're looking at that air cell. If it stays in the fat end, that's all the information that you need. Put the egg back down. We don't have to. Oh, what's the word? Geek out on the egg. Rotate it every which way and really dissect it. Do that on a store-Bought egg. Don't do that on these shipped eggs. Okay, so just gently put the egg back down. Now if you get the egg and you're candling it and the air cell is broken or saddled. You are gonna still set it you've got the information that you need, so just put the egg to the side and you may put an X on it or something with a pencil. I mean, I use Sharpies, it doesn't matter to me, but whatever, just mark it that that air cell was detached and put them in the incubator. I had one person say they wouldn't incubate'em, just put them in the incubator. Just because the A cell is detached does not mean it won't grow. It means it has a more difficult chance of growing, but it will still grow. Now, this is where experience comes into play. When I got some shipped eggs for a friend, um, actually three weeks ago today, they're in the Hatcher retina Now. Every single one of the air cells was broken. Two of them were saddled, and I texted him and I said, I will try, but this will take all of my skills to get them to grow. Okay? And this is what I did. I put them in. My incubator, which I have a hatch in time, so they're rocking, they're not rotating on their sides, and I did not turn the turn on. I didn't plug it in for 24 hours. Then I plugged it in and waited seven days. He, I don't typically candle. He wanted to know how it looked, so I just took the tray out and put the light on'em. I did not remove the eggs from the trays. If you're going to candle. Only do it at day seven. From day three to day seven, it is very important that the eggs are rotated, they're tilted, they're undisturbed. That's the largest, I don't know, the most important days for growth in an egg. Okay, is day three to seven and we're talking about chicken eggs here, three to seven. So don't candle before day seven. You're not, if you don't know what you're looking at, you're not gonna see anything anyway. And day seven, if you want to candle. You want to disturb the egg, the least amount that you can get with get by with, and that means not turning it upside down on top of that light on the top of the incubator. That means if you don't even have to take'em out of the tray, which is what I do, just take my Candler right on top of the egg, still sitting in the tray and candle them the only information that you're looking for. Is, do you see veins or do you see something that might explode? That's also useful information. It's a very rare occurrence. Your nose will not lie to you, so you're not gonna miss it. We've all had that happen just back away slowly. Oh, if you ever do have that happen, just like our rabbit hole set session here, if you ever do have a stinky bomb in there and it hasn't exploded yet, put your hand inside of a plastic bag from wherever. Just grab the egg very gently and. Put it inside the bag, tie it up, because the second it gets any kind of pressure on it, like you said on the table or something, it's gonna explode. So take it straight outside. If it is oozing and it has stuck to the Turner, you move all the good eggs and you take the whole thing outside and then you clean it and bring it back in. That's how you get rid of a stink bomb. Okay. Where was I don't Don't try to pick it up. Yeah, don't try to pick it up. If it's stuck, don't try to unstick it inside the house. Okay. So where was it? Oh, candle in. So they're in the turner. Hopefully you've got one where they're sitting upright. You're just simply looking for growth. The air cells should be getting bigger. You should see some veins. Really, you're probably not gonna notice a whole lot more than that. Um, if you do have the ring of death, I mean, you could pull those. I am not ever going to tell you to pull anything. Unless it's just an obvious stink bomb waiting to happen, I am not one to, unless you're just completely outta space for whatever reason, just leave'em. There's always a chance that you're wrong. Just leave them in there, okay? So that, don't bother them again until day 18. You've got'em upright. Just let'em do their thing. These have already had the hardest possible start to life possible, so just leave them alone to day 18. And because you've got'em upright, because you're gently rocking them, that air still air sack cell has to be in the top just because of. Gravity and air pressure. Right. Would it be air pressure or gravity? I don't know which, I mean both. I guess so, because gravity's gonna pull one down and the pressure will pull the other up. Of course. The air up. Yeah. Okay. The as far as the humidity, do what you normally do. I like 40% where I am. If you decide to go a little bit heavier on the humidity, upright is always great because it cures a lot of evils. It moisture will go down and the chick's head is up. That way it keeps the chick's head away from the moisture. If you've got your humidity too high, we'll keep them from drowning. It's always a good tip. Shipped eggs are not okay, so now you're at day 18. And just so you know, these shipped eggs that I got in with all the detached air cells. I put seven in the hatcher out of 12. So it is very possible to grow eggs or chicks on detached air cells. Okay? When I put them in the hatching basket, I still left them upright. I did not lay them on their side because you don't want that air cell to shift. The egg has already been damaged between the shell and the membrane. That's where the air is. I didn't want to risk. The air moving away from where it needs to be for the chick to be positioned to hatch. So I took a plastic egg crate and cut it. Well, I mean I keep one, but it's cut to eight eggs and I put in the hatching basket, put them in there, and they're in the hatcher right now. They're destined to hatcher in a couple days. That's awesome. Yeah, and you can always hatch upright. And quite honestly, you know how I learned that they can hatch upright. You guys are gonna laugh. Forgot to move on to the hatcher. Had oops moments. Yeah. Those oops moments will teach you a lot of stuff. Don't change the humidity. Just go out there one day and, oops, there's chicks in the incubator. Yeah. I've had, I've had that, oh crap moments. Oh, what? Whoa, what is that noise? Oh God, I forgot to move on. And I open it up and like they're. Looking at me like, Hey, there's some really hardy birds in there. And I'm like, alright let's uh, get you guys in the brooder. I opened mine the other day and there was a Turkey pull in the bottom of it. I guess the egg. She must have sat on the egg for a few days and it hatched about five days early before the rest of the eggs, so you know it. They're not hard. I think. I think we tend to overthink things. I mean, if a chicken can hatch an egg, surely we're smarter than a chicken, right? Did I say that out loud? The thing? But here's the thing though, when, and, and this is totally not fair, but when a chicken hatches eggs out in Mother Nature. Things aren't perfect. Mm-hmm. The humidity fluctuates like crazy. The temperature fluctuates, you know? Yes, she's putting a lot of her body heat on those eggs, but you got a lot of fluctuation there. And those are also some of the most hearty, best birds you can have is ones that are hand hatched When you flip that over and try to put science into it instead of mother nature. You kind of gotta be more consistent with the humidity and not let the temperature fluctuate as much and it doesn't work out as good either. It's crazy. Well, let's see, what else did we leave out on? Shipped eggs. Use the same temperature that you would always use. 37.8 Celsius. I was reading, you know, my pastime is to read science papers. Did you know that even a degree off can cause issues with the chick, like mortality, higher mortality or development issues. I've heard anything from higher mortality to early hatches. Or no hatches at all. So if they hatch, according to this paper that I was reading, if they hatch too early, then their growth rate will actually be harmed like up to six weeks. So 37.82 or two. 37.8 is ideal, and that is the incubator temperature. Um, because all the stuff going on in the egg yolk is creating its own heat inside of the egg, which explains why pregnant people are always hot. I wouldn't know. Yeah, I, I don't think you would. Okay, let's see. Let me look at my outline here. Make sure I didn't miss anything. Um, we did hatch rates. I think we're good. I think we hit everything. I mean, somebody, people can go to branch roos.com. There is a free ebook on hatching shift ads. Oh yeah, I did do that. I actually have an entire page on my website with a masterclass video for free. Um, brian spruce.com/incubating so you can get more there. And I gotta say this folks, a lot of the better breeders that do ship hatching eggs, they will ship you a little pamphlet, some notes, some tips. Things that they've learned be that their eggs hatch best with. And you know, nobody's gonna know how a breeder's eggs hatch better than that breeder. So if they send you a pamphlet, don't rely heavily on Google or a lot of the Facebook groups because there's a lot of misinformation. A lot of those go with what the breeder said, or read the directions on your incubator. See what it says because, and practice on cheaper eggs. Yeah. Don't let your first set of hatching eggs be a$250 a dozen set of eggs. Well, oops. So you wanna hear my story on my first shipped eggs? Mine was$250 dozen hatching eggs, and I was glad because a guy sent me 15 eggs and 12 of them did hatch. But I was told by a lot of people that was very stupid because that almost never works out that well. Yeah, so when I was trying to get started with cos I ordered a dozen, nothing hatched. She sent me another dozen and one hatched. It lived for a day. It was very puny and had issues and it died. So I had nothing to show for my hundreds of dollars, so I ended up buying a trio. It worked out better for me in the end. I do recommend people to start with live birds. Like started a started trio or something. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what you're doing. If you're just, if you're just wanting some birds in your backyard and you don't care what they are, I mean, just try to find something local. But if you're trying to do a specialty bird. Um, like the coachings you know, I had, ordering in the trio was the best choice I could have made. It was spendy, but they were live and I got so much off of them that it, you know, it saved me money in the end. Yeah. We actually did a podcast a while back about that exact topic on what to start with and where to get your foundation that people could go back and reference if they're looking at getting into a particular breed. Um, because we talked about some success stories and some nightmares. Yep. Oh, I did think of one thing that's not in my outline. Since shipped eggs are, let's say 50%, always order double what you want. Yeah. If you have a certain number, like if you want to hatch out 12 eggs. Go ahead and order two dozen. Yeah. And then assume that half of them are gonna be males. Yeah. So if you want three hens, you gotta order a lot. Look, I've had it happen where I've hatched out and had predominantly females and get really excited, and I take eggs from the same set of birds and I'm like, I got a lot of hens last time. Get a lot of hens again, this is gonna be nice. And I wind up with like two hens out of a hundred. Yeah. Yep. Nature will do what nature wants. Mm-hmm. Proven facts. Yep. All right. Well I think I'm done. Yep. Be sure to give us a like and a follow. Click the notifications so you know when we let out. A new episode on Thursdays looks great. If you have any questions, you can email info@poultrynerdspodcast.com and one of us will get back to you. If you have any show ideas or anything like that, leave us a comment or shoot us an email. I will say this, we have been getting some fan mail. On Buzz Sprouts where our podcast is hosted, and unfortunately we can't respond to those. I do not know why. Seems very dumb to me, but we can't respond. So if you would leave some type of contact information so we can get you those answers or email us directly, that would be a huge help. We need to turn that off. Yeah. Till next time. Bye.