[shetlandpaul]

then maybe get anothe cock to look after the other girls. thou the girls don't seem to care what the boys say.

[MiriMaran]

Mmm that sounds like the human species!!!!

[YorkshireSmallholder]

Just a quick update - a complete failure unfortunately. I bought 6 light sussex eggs from ebay. 3 hens decided they wanted to sit in the same box resulting in a broken egg early on & i suspect this contaminated the others. I left it as long as I could wait but after checking the eggs over the weekend - nothing. Never mind - hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly & we won't be fighting over the 1 egg a day we're currently getting.

[MiriMaran]

Mine were due to hatch yesterday - 6 ebay eggs and 3 home eggs.  So far we have 4 live chicks and 1 dead chick - got squashed I think!

[hexhammeasure]

I had 6 live ducklings from 14 eggs 3 from each batch so the extra battered box didn't seem to be affected any more than the 2nd batch. All were fertile but only 7 developed fully, 1 died before it cracked the egg. so I'll put that down as a success as I was working on 50% hatch anyway.

[shetlandpaul]

thats very impressive all being fertile.

[jameslindsay]

3 times I have bought duck eggs off e bay and twice I have had 100% successful hatching from 12 eggs and one other time 1 wasn't fertile from 6 and another 2 didn't develop out of 12.

[Bodger]

lots of folk here have tried Ebay eggs with mixed success.  I bought bantams (12), my pal tried to hatch them in her incubator - 2 hatched, one died within 24 hours.  Maybe they are x-rayed in the post?

They are definately not X rayed in inland post. Their are umpteen other factors that can affect hatchability though.