The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: little brown sheep on March 29, 2019, 05:50:34 pm
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Does anyone have experience of importing hatching eggs? I'm trying to understand the Animal Health document but its very confusing.
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Just go to France in a car and bring some. Make sure you do it before Brexit but even then they won't be searching every car.
To be honest I have no idea on the actual regulations - I know some people who imported hatching eggs from France an Germany and chicks from France.
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Personally I wouldnt import hatching eggs. Even transporting around the UK can significantly reduce the numbers that hatch. And its cheaper.
Unless its some rare breed that is found nowhere in the UK, it saves a lot time and brainpower to purchase nearer home, and heartache when you find a 15% hatch rate, and those that do hatch are all males. :-\
Dont mean to sound negative, but its all happened. If you do decide to go for it, I would phone APHA and ask them to decipher it, then you know for sure. It certainly does look confusing.
Good luck :)
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I have heard of someone who took hatching eggs from England on the plane and managed to persuade customs at Heathrow NOT to send the box through the X-ray scanner, as that kills the eggs. I discussed it at East Midlands and they told me the only way the eggs would avoid the scanner is if I had all the correct documentation for exemption. If you fly from France that will be a problem- I've taken eating eggs many times but they all go through the machine in hand luggage. Your exemption paperwork would need to be translated officially into French. So if you want to try and ask them to avoid the scanner, that's a risky unofficial route even if your French is great.
No problem in a car though. Just put them in French egg boxes with your other supermarket shopping. I'd expect hatching rates to be better than those eggs which are posted in England and 'thrown' through the system. I am under the impression that egg trafficking is commonplace as I know of people with English breeds.
What breed are you trying to import? There is a facebook group here called 'Chicken Keepers in France' that may be able to help. You might be able to get some eggs from 'la Ferme de Beaumont' (www.fermedebeaumont.com (http://www.fermedebeaumont.com)) which is a rare breed company based in Eu, a Northern town betweenDieppe and Abbeville. It's a difficult place to find, but I got there in the end- just two hours from Calais.
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Took some through X-ray and they did ok. Was on a Cardiff to Edinburgh flight.
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WHY?
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That's interesting Steph Hen- perhaps the new generation of machines are OK for hatching eggs?
One security man suggested double wrapping the egg box in aluminium foil. It would show up on the scanner as a solid lump and be taken aside for manual inspection. The bag would then go through the scanner again, but without the eggs in.
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Staff at the airport conducted a manual search (I called ahead to request, Sunday afternoon, they were pretty quiet) but then changed their minds and said they’d have to also X-ray. I don’t think their equipment was particularly new, this was 2013.