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.