Gathering Fertile Eggs for Shipping

First of all, we try to keep a young rooster, no more than 2 1/2 years old for breeding purposes.  We gather eggs from the breeding flock of hens with a rooster in the pen with them. It takes one rooster to every ten hens to produce fertile eggs. We avoid eggs with cracked or thin shells and keep only clean eggs for hatching. Do not wash dirty eggs or wipe eggs clean with a damp cloth. This removes the egg's protective coating and exposes it to entry of disease organisms.  Washed eggs are used for consumption.

Every day, several times a day, eggs are gathered.  We don’t wait for a hen to start her “I’m laying an egg” cackle and then run out there to gather each egg.  We just make sure we look morning, noon and night.  If the weather is cold or freezing more care needs to be taken to gather eggs quicker, otherwise the eggs can freeze.  If your hens have a favorite nest and refuse to use the other nests (which by the way are pretty much identical to the favorite one), that can actually be a blessing in the colder weather because eggs don’t get the chance to freeze.   It is always good to gather just laid warm eggs in the winter around here.

Once Dan collects eggs, they are brought into the kitchen and I take over from here on.  I check for soil, cracks and shell abnormalities.  After separating the eggs, I take the eggs for incubating into my room where it is within the temperature range all year except summer and then I take eggs to the basement.  Store the eggs you plan to incubate in a place, that's between 50 and 75 degrees F, until they're placed in the incubator.  I date each egg and if we have more than one breeding flock to collect from, the breeding flock identification goes on the big end of the egg along with the date collected - using a pencil.  I have an incubation chart that I designed that I mark with the amount of eggs collected on each day.  That chart is sent to each customer that receives egg.  Eggs are stored in an egg carton and rotated three times a day.  This is very easy to do in the carton because when you put the pointy end down and close the lid, all you need to do to rotate the eggs is to raise one end of the carton about 2 inches by putting something under the end or side and then turn the carton around ¼ turn each time you rotate it.  Turn in the same direction so you won’t have to try to remember which way it was turned last time you did it.  I always turn the eggs clockwise.  When I take the eggs to the basement, I use the wood trim on the wall next to the floor to raise the egg carton because the floor is the coolest part of the room and the trim is 2 inches tall. 

Many times a person carefully attends to the incubation process, but disregards the care of the eggs before they are placed in the incubator. Even before incubation starts, your baby chick has begun developing.  Eggs should be set to hatch within 7 days of gathering.  I have successfully hatched 10 to 14 day old eggs, but I don’t recommend it for shipped eggs and hatchability is reduced as the eggs get older.  Allow cool eggs to warm slowly to room temperature before placing in the incubator. Abrupt warming from 55 degrees to 100 degrees causes moisture condensation on the eggshell and reduces hatchability.  Also, eggs that have been shipped could have damaged air cells.  Some cells will reposition into the correct place if allowed to rest and warm up slowly.  Unfortunately this does not always work and some eggs that have been damaged in shipping just will not hatch.  Enough eggs do make it through to make it worth our while to try.  In these days, a backyard flock is a good hedge against the skyrocketing uncertainty of our food future and the financial problems in this economy.