11/10/2022
MAIL EGGS
The strongest eggs (shells) and chicks are those from hens aged 2 years or older. A 3-year-old hen has proven to be healthy and her calcium metabolism is optimal. A hen extracts the calcium for egg shells from her bones. Through feed and egg-laying breaks, she replenishes it. The older the hen, the bigger and stronger the chick in terms of disease resistance and the amount of nutrition contained in the egg.
Ask for eggs of older hens.
A few tips for better results:
1. To get best possible hatches: Ask the owner of the eggs to 'start' the eggs by incubating them for 24 hrs prior to shipping. This is an old trick done in the 19th and 20st century for hatching eggs (transport by cart, truck, train was rough).
The early cell division stops when the temp goes down and starts up again in the incubator at its destination. You can let started eggs travel for 1-2 weeks hatch rates are better than without starting them.
2. Are the eggs going to fly by plane? Ask owner to put the eggs in an airtight Thing: Weck jars, biscuit-tin taped airtight, etc. All to keep air pressure the same.
Common damage: detached cords (yolk), air sack rupture, micro or maxi cracks.
3. Candle the eggs before you incubate to see if the air bubble is still fixed. If not, forget it (my experience). Some manage to hatch hundreds!!! of eggs with detached air cells, upright position, find those magicians.
4. Micro cracks can be repaired with with nail varnish or latex-based photo glue. Some use candle wax, you have to have candles then, which also applies to the aforementioned things. Most importantly, no moisture can escape. Only do it on the cracks, so as not to suffocate the embryo.
5. The cords that normally hold the yolk in the centre can break due to rough transport. You cannot fix this, one way to tackle is not turning the egg the first 4 days of incubation. After that turn very careful by hand a bit to left and right. The point is that the membranes do not stick together. If you manage till hatching time when cords are detached, birth can be a problem due to the chick laying in breech.
6. Switch off auto turner. I had mail eggs never in the auto turner when damaged.
Any damaged eggs are best to be incubated upright, air cell up. If you have an incubator where eggs are on their sides, make a construction or 'hammocks' between the dividers.
7. If some eggs do not hatch but there is a chick inside, put the egg in a glass with warm water and see if it moves. If the rest of the chicks have already hatched, you can peel an egg with a moving chick.
8. Peeling too early leads to a lot of blood loss. If you see that the blood has not yet withdrawn from the membrane, put the chick back in the incubator. Try again a few hours later. A little bit of blood loss won't hurt.
9. It is a fable that chicks that do not hatch themselves are weak, with transported eggs the chicks are already at a disadvantage. So helping them can't hurt. If the chick is not well formed, it will keel over later.
GREAT TIP FROM ANN DOUGLAS: write 'Bee embryos' ⚠️ Handle with Care on the box with eggs. Handling may be more gentle 😂
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