Laree Ranch
The Hatching Guide
Work out your lockdown and hatch dates, then everything we have learned about getting shipped eggs through twenty one days.
Hatch Dates
Set date
Based on a 21 day cycle with lockdown on day 18. Bantam eggs, silkies included, sometimes pip a day early.
Shipped eggs are a different animal
One · Start here if your eggs arrived in a box
An egg that has travelled through a sorting facility has been shaken, pressure cycled, and tipped in every direction. The part that suffers is the air cell at the fat end, which can loosen or detach entirely. How you handle those first few days decides most of your hatch.
The incubator matters
For shipped eggs we strongly recommend an incubator that holds eggs upright with the fat end up, rather than lying them on their sides. Keeping that end elevated protects the air cell while it settles.
We run Maticoopx incubators here. They are affordable, they hold eggs upright, and they have been reliable for us through a lot of hatches.
Rest them before anything else. When the box arrives, stand the eggs fat end up in a carton at room temperature and leave them alone for twelve to twenty four hours. Do not set them straight into a running incubator.
Then set them upright and do not turn them at all for three to seven days. This is the single most important thing you can do for shipped eggs. A detached air cell can reattach during that window, but only if it is left undisturbed and the egg stays vertical. Turning in those first days is how you lose eggs that would otherwise have made it.
Candle at day seven. By then you can see veining clearly, pull anything that is obviously clear, and check which air cells reattached during the no turning window. The ones that did can go on as normal. The ones that did not need a different plan for the rest of the run.
Eggs with air cells that never reattach
Two · They are not lost
An egg with a permanently detached or free floating air cell can still hatch. It just has to stay upright and completely still for the entire twenty one days.
Here is how we handle it when a batch is mixed. We let the trays turn as normal for the healthy eggs, and we pull one tray out and replace it with a cut up egg carton. The non turners go in the carton, fat end up, and they sit there undisturbed while everything around them turns. One incubator, two protocols, no compromise on either group.
At hatch time
Eggs with sound air cells go on their sides for the hatch, the way you normally would.
Eggs with detached air cells stay vertical in their cartons, fat end up, right through hatching. It looks wrong and it works. Chicks can and do hatch out of a carton. Give them the chance.
Hatch rates on detached air cell eggs are lower, and that is simply the nature of it. But lower is not zero, and we have had plenty of chicks come out of a carton that would not have made it any other way.
About Hatch Rates
Please read this before buying hatching eggs from anyone, us included.
We cannot guarantee hatch rates, and we cannot guarantee that every egg is fertile. Nobody honestly can. Fertility varies month to month with the weather, the age of the birds, and a dozen things outside anyone's control.
What we can tell you is what we see here. Eggs collected on the ranch and set in our own incubators run 85 to 100 percent fertility. That is the number our flock produces under our conditions.
Shipping changes everything. Temperature swings, pressure changes, rough handling, and time out of the incubator all take a toll before the eggs ever reach you. A noticeably lower hatch rate from shipped eggs is normal and expected, even when the eggs left here fertile and were packed carefully.
We do not offer refunds or replacements on hatching eggs. Once a box leaves our hands it is in the care of the postal service and then in your incubator, and neither is something we can control. Buying shipped hatching eggs means accepting that risk up front.
If that is not a gamble you want to take, we completely understand, and local pickup of chicks is the surer route.
Laree Ranch
