Incubating 4-month-old eggs

[vonmatter]

Hey guys,

I'm just sharing my experiment here, it may as well help someone.

My mom's chickens all died, after a huge attack of African honey bees, she actually ended up in the hospital due to trying to save them.

Anyway, I rescued the last eggs, but couldn't hatch right away due to being in the middle of moving to a different city besides, I didn't even had an incubator, and only now 4 months later I am incubating those eggs.

And yes I am aware of the problems and, that is almost impossible to have anything hatching but, still, I decided to give it a try.

I will share here my experience and possible results. Any opinions about it? Similar experiences?

Hope you all are well and having a nice time. Best.

 

[wrathsfarm]

Interesting so I'm following along. Sending well wishes to your Mom and hope you get some littles to hatch for you both.

 

[vonmatter]

Interesting so I'm following along. Sending well wishes to your Mom and hope you get some littles to hatch for you both.

Thanks

 

[vonmatter]

Okay, some news,

The Orpington eggs are dead, 5 of them developed that blood ring internally.

However, 5 eggs from Isa Brown and Orpington rooster are alive and developing

For me, this is surprising cause I expected all the eggs to be quitters or didn't even start to develop an embryo.

All I've done is to be very serious about temperature and humidity, keeping it at 37.5 C and humidity between 50 and 55%.

This is far from a real scientific experiment but, I would guess the chicken breed can highly influence the hatching chances.

Let's see if any embryos end up hatching.

Cheers

 

[wrathsfarm]

Okay, some news,

The Orpington eggs are dead, 5 of them developed that blood ring internally.

However, 5 eggs from Isa Brown and Orpington rooster are alive and developing

For me, this is surprising cause I expected all the eggs to be quitters or didn't even start to develop an embryo.

All I've done is to be very serious about temperature and humidity, keeping it at 37.5 C and humidity between 50 and 55%.

This is far from a real scientific experiment but, I would guess the chicken breed can highly influence the hatching chances.

Let's see if any embryos end up hatching.

Cheers

That's encouraging. Hopefully they develop to full term.

When is the expected hatch date?

 

[Yardmom]

How did you store the eggs for the 4 months? Temperature? Humidity? Did you rotate?

 

[Susan Skylark]

This will be a cool post to watch, I took 3 week old quail eggs to day 10 and had 90 percent plus development but 50 percent early embryonic death or deformed embryos. This seems to be the pattern with yours as well, here’s hoping for healthy chicks!

 

[BigBlueHen53]