The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Stereo on June 17, 2017, 01:38:44 pm
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Store my eggs in a barn which is well insulated and I would say about 'room temp' at the moment. Maybe cooler at night. Anyway, have noticed a sudden drop in fertility and some 'bad' eggs on candling. I pick up every day and my nest box system means that there is no chance of old eggs being collected. Down to the shed and marked by date etc.
Looking back at records I had this last year too so I am assuming it must be heat. I do have a large fridge spare and could buy a few more cheap. Would it be better to store them in fridges at this time of year? You could set them to the 'hottest' temp as it were. Maybe even put in a tub of water to keep everything nice and humid.
Anyway else had problems storing eggs in summer?
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We store ours in an old veterinary room - North-facing, concrete floor, unheated. Fridge too cold, even on "warmest setting" and no need of extra humidity in this small island on the edge of the Atlantic. Are they being laid into clean nestboxes, collected with clean hands and stored in clean egg boxes or a box lined with clean shavings?
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In England we used to store hatching eggs in the cellar, but no cellar here unfortunately. Room temperature is 26C which is far too hot to store hatching eggs. Posted on this forum a few years back and was advised we could keep them in the fridge but ONLY if they hadn't been stored elsewhere at a high temperature because the embryo over-develops and is killed by the cold. So we tried it, collecting the eggs regularly and putting them straight into the fridge in egg boxes. Prior to incubation we bought them up to room temperature, then used egg sanitiser and then had 100% hatch.
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Cheers for the replies. I think my room is too hot. I do have an old fridge in the shed. Maybe could set it to it's highest setting and put them in there.
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many years ago we had a local farmer that sold eating eggs at his front gate + all the eggs were boxed and placed in a working old fridge..I used to incubate them and get plenty of chicks... we saw the hens out in the fields with cockerels running with them.
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I always store my eggs for incubation in the fridge, collect once a day and straight into fridge, no washing unless very messy. Never had a problem... just hatched 14 chicks from 24 eggs (but some of the eggs were quite rough shelled and these were older hens too, so I think good enough fertility).