Will eggs hatch after being in the fridge?

[TheNewMrsEvans]

People have hatched the ones from Trader Joes...they got red-sexlink type birds from them...not a great %, but enough that they have some chickens now

They used ones that were less than 5 days from packaging date.

 

[LilDucky85]

Ohh this is every BYC egg sellers best kept secret isnt it!? lol. Now I feel like a possible egg killer.

 

[Jeff9118]

Just as a test once as I have always wondered. I went to the grocery store and bought a dozen cage free brown eggs and put them all in the bator. Everyone said they would not hatch and made fun of me stating they had been washed and there was probaly no rooster. On day 21, 2 of the dozen hatched. One appeared to be a white rock but died shortly after hatching and the other was a barred rock that I raised. It turned out to be a rooster I did not need, but proof that this could be done. I got them at FoodFair about 3 years ago.

 

[Judy]

Did you do eggtopsies? Were the others fertile?

 

[LilDucky85]

eggtopsies LOL love it!

 

[Jeff9118]

Actually I had candled the eggs at 14 days as I always do. The other 10 had no signs at all that they had even began to develop. That doesnt mean at one time they were not fertile though. I recommend others to try. Cage free eggs cost a little more but even if you hatch and raise only one. $2.00 is not a bad price for a chick. I really expected that if any did hatch they would be one of the sex links, so the end result was a nice suprise.

 

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

I just hatched 5 out of a dozen Trader Joe's eggs that were 7 days old.

Leghorns probably, or Hy-Line "superchickens" more likely.

9 of them were developing, but my own hypothesis is that the mother hens were fed such poor quality diets that the babies had a hard time making it.

 

[Akane]

I lost several button quail hens due to a toxin and decided to set their eggs. They'd been in the fridge 10-14 days and some hadn't been put in the fridge right away so they were older than that. I had 24 of 25 hatch and those are currently my new generation of breeders.

 

[MichiganWoods]

I successfully hatched some eggs that had been in a fridge for several days. Totally possible.

 

[Rooster Ray]

Just last weekend I hatched 27 of 29 or 90% and all came out of the fridge most were in there for only a week or so.