My Edible Garden

I've been gardening for most of my life and have been a devoted fan of organic gardening the whole time. It just makes so much more sense to work in harmony with Mother Nature than to fight her. Besides which it is better for the planet and better for our bodies. Here you can see what I'm planting and harvesting, with gardening hints and resources thrown in for good measure.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Eggs for Hatching

Welsummer eggs
Unless you are a chicken nut (what one of my friends calls me & his wife) you might not know that people often ship eggs around the country for the purpose of hatching them.

When a particular type of chicken is hard to come by in an area then sometimes hatching eggs are a good thing to try.

These are my Welsummer eggs that have just arrived from Erhard Weihs of Kummer Poultry Farm. Shipping is very hard on eggs and they don't always make it through the postal service in very good shape. Since they are perishable they should always be sent Priority Mail. Of course they should be well wrapped and padded. I ordered one dozen eggs, Erhard shipped 14. One was broken enroute so I have 13 whole eggs.

After unpacking them I set them in a carton, big end up to let the air cell settle. I will set them in my incubator tomorrow. I'll know in about 10 days how many are viable and growing and how many got scrambled.

This is a great article with a lot of information and links about hatching eggs and also how to handle the special problems presented by shipped eggs.
Posted by Mary Hysong at 8:16 PM

2 comments:

  1. cbnovickOctober 3, 2013 at 8:34 PM

    Good luck on your hatch, Mary. Standard bred Welsummers are great birds!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 3, 2013 at 9:38 PM

    Only a true chicken nut can appreciate high dollar eggs. . Good luck on the hatch.

    ReplyDelete

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