Hatching eggs by mail. Good idea or Not?

I really have lots of questions. I was looking at the possibity of getting hatching eggs on e-bay. Because thats the only place other than a hatchery like McMurray were I see you can buy eggs for hatching. But of course even if I decided to do this I am not ready. Not least of which is I have no incubator and no interest in paying 500 to 800 dollars for such a thing. Then the 3 egg mini thinggies are too small to be of any use. From what I see, they sell eggs on e-bay in from 6 to 10 usually.

Plus I obviously have no housing for chickens. So figgure they can ship eggs now as its summer but do they ship them all year round? Don't they get too cold in winter so wouldn't hatch? Sorry for the dumb questions but I really have no idea about such things.

There are usually some eggs available year round on eBay....but maybe 200-300 in the winter vs thousands in the summer. Very high summer temps are not good for shipped eggs either. Also, if you are looking at limited incubator space, the better sellers usually send at least a couple more eggs in case of breakage, and some will send twice as many if they have extra eggs.

I would recommend you look for a Brinsea or R-CON SURO 24 egg incubator...I have the R-CON, I bought it on sale and it was about $250 with a water pump to maintain humidity (a real pain with the the cheaper styrofoam Little Giant, Hoverbator brands).

The styro ones are about $50 each, and hold about 41 eggs, but , you have to buy the egg turner separately (another $50) and fiddle with the temp and humidity to make it work right. They also sell a forced air fan instillation kit for another $50...so if you buy everything with the styros it ends up costing about $150 and it can take a while to calibrate everything so you get a good hatch. Also they gradually decrease in successful hatching over time.

Still I have had good hatches with the styros...but don't buy them on-line. Go to a feed store. If you have the time and discipline to hand turn the eggs, it will save you $50 and I don't think the fan is really necessary--saving another $50.

First you can get a good incubator for $100.00 and up,and it would depend on where you live if you could have ebay eggs send in the winter and how how long they would be in the mail system.I have ordered eggs three times from ebay first time none hatched they were to long in the mail(they got lost for a day) the second ones I had 12 eggs and 5 hatched,I have 6 under a broody right now and they should hatch in 19 days or so if I`m lucky.And lastly there are never any dumb questions on here,how are you going to learn if you don`t ask,LOL

Do they have live chicks on e-bay in the summer? I didn't see any live chicks, only hatching eggs.

No, they don't allow live chicks on eBay.

But some hatcheries will send special "small orders" which can be as few as 3 to 6 chicks. You have to pay extra...sometimes quite a bit, but I got my first 6 chicks that way and they were very nice birds. I ordered Welsummers, Buff Orpintons, and Delawares from Meyers:

http://www.meyerhatchery.com/page_221.htm

I think "My Pet Chicken" also does small chick orders.

I am collecting sites that do the small order chicks shipping. Thanks for that link, it's new to me. I can't do for the ones like McMurray that want you to order 25 chicks. I could never have 25 chickens.

I still haven't ruled out hatching eggs. I Think there are more choices in hatching eggs. But of course I need an incubator if I go that route and have looked buit its still confusing to me.

So looking at Meyers, I see they have the started 17 week old started pullets somewhat like McCurray does. Only the have three varies instead of the one just Red Star. But they don't have Red Star but do offer Black Star. But again, as McMurrays they say they are debeaked.

So far I don't have an incubator. Somehow I just know that if I had one all set up and ready to go then I would not be able to resist something on all those e-bay auctions. I do keep looking at them.

I have read the advice that if one has never hatched before to start off with something easy and cheap as far as trying hatching eggs. I understand the reason behind the don't spend too much as it might not work as in they might not hatch so your not out much money. But I don't really understand too much about easy. Some chicken breeds are more easy than others to hatch?

I am thinking that getting eggs and hatching them, having chicks to brood and then grow out might actually be a good thing for chicken wanna be owners like me.

A few breeds, like Serama, are a bit difficult to hatch because the eggs don't ship well. Others, like Araucana and Japanese Bantams have genetic problems that lower the hatch rate. In general rarer breeds' eggs are more expensive, so that if you are uncertain about your hatching prowess, it might be cheaper to practice on the more common breeds, so you won't lose as much if you have a poor hatch.

Having said that, if you only want a few chickens and can accept that your first hatch might not be that great; then, rather than ending up with a bunch of chicks of a breed you really aren't interested in, I'd go for what you think you really want.

One caveat....and the reason it might be best to go for a more automated incubator (like the Brinsea or R-Con-although even with them I would calibrate before you start incubating)...fluctuating temperatures can favour the hatching of roosters over pullets. So, even though technically there should be an even # of males and females in the eggs, you will hatch out more roosters. This can be very annoying because you will get very attached to the little boys before you know what they are (and the little boys also tend to be the most outgoing and friendly). Of course if you went with one of the auto-sexing breeds, like Cuckoo Marans, Faverolles or Barnevelders, or the sex-links, you would at least know what you had shortly after hatching.

I do know that hatching my own eggs I can and will end up with lots more roosters than if I bought chicks from the hatchey. Although I do understand that even the female chicks are only about 90 per cent accurate so you still can get males.

But I still don't have a concept of all this. I do know myself and once I get fixated on what I want I tend to go overboard completely. Some of you, like AnnieBBB know me from the daylily forum were you can see I am all all out gardener. I have the daylily crazies badly. So wanting chickens can easily translate into getting the chicken crazies. But while I could dig up my lawn and put in flowerbeds to have 600 daylilies by now, its not the same with animals. But maybe I could keep myself happy by trying out hatching eggs, and growing them out for awhile before culling by keeping only one or two and starting again with the hatching eggs. Honestly, I don't know as its ALL based on theory for me. I have had pet type annimals of different sorts forever but not livestock type annimals. I have kept many different birds like parakeets, Austrialian finches, cockateils and such and bred them. Have bred show stock both cats and dogs. Have bred geckos and done the reptile shows and sold them there. All sorts of lots of annimals in my past.

Right now though my last cat passed away during the summer and I was thinking of getting a small dog. Now that I am thinking chickens I am even rethinking the dog idea. So have no animals at all currently.

I dunno, Rita, an incubator could be dangerous for you LOL. About e-bay eggs... think of it this way... You buy a clump of expensive & beautiful Westbourne Daylilies and you're all excited, plant them and tend to them with lots of TLC, but when they bloom there are some Ditch Lilies mixed in. Not that Ditch Lilies don't have charm, but it's not what you wanted or needed. If you order day old chicks (meyers is very good) you will get to pick the exact breed and the sex. Much less chance of getting a high percentage of roosters (ditch lilies) from incubating.

If I only wanted 3 or 4 laying hens I would order 6 Day Old chicks. The Vegas odds are that one will be a rooster and you'll lose one from stress, shipping, illness or whatever, between the time they are day old to point of lay.

However, if you do buy an incubator you would be a great person to do incubating for others too. You are so dedicated to everything that you do!

Annie- Its not that I ONLY want 3 or 4. I have a tendency to go overboard on anything so I think wanting 30-40 is much more realistic of what I would like to have. However, that is simply impossible.

The more I have been trying to learn the more I think there is more than one way to do things. Once I get the crazies for something, I simply can not stop. So it might work out I get 6 chicks, loose one, allow for the mistaken rooster to get rid of and raise 4 hens. If I look at it as 4 pets it might work for me and I leave it at that. But you just don't know me, I just never can leave things be. Thats why I think hatching might be better, give me more to fuss about and I could cull and hatch again if I didn't have what I wanted first time around or any time around. Who knows, I might try the incubating once and say never again LOL!

When I first started looking it was always with the idea of buying chicks. Now I am more leaning to learning to hatch.

I do know thats a learning curve and figgure I just might try to get experience in hatching and raising chicks. I don't know if its so wise to staet with what one wants or a test batch. Murphys law would tell us if I bought the lovely Welsummer hatching eggs they wouldn't hatch but if I bought the cheepo mixed barnyard chicken eggs that I deffinately don't want as my goal for keepers to try out hatching then they would do well hatching.

I forgot to add hatching for someone else would never work for me. As we all know, too much can go wrong and I would not be willing to be responsible for anything but my own.

OH boy... another one bites the dust! You are among like kind here... I bought 4 hatchery chicks from the local feed store, and then found ebay and hatching.. I went totally overboard. Trust me, hatching is as addicting as daylillies or brugs.. :) Especially when you have a good broody hen or like 12.. LOL No, serious.. it's sooo much easier when the broody does all the work and worry..

Once you hatch, you will be hopelessly addicted.. it's sooo fun and sooo wonderful.

Oh, stop teasing NYR, ZZ and Annie....you know how pleasant and yet strangely uncompelling hatching really is. I haven't even thought of buying more eggs in...why it must be nanosec...errrr....months.

{{{Shhhhhh! Everyone, we have her in our grasps....it only remains to let her trip the snare wire of incubation and she will be one of us. Do not frighten her off with our desperate anticipation. "Softly, softly catchee monkey"}}}

I don't have an incubator so as long as I don't have one I know I can't hit that buy button on the egg auctions. But then I don't have a coop either. So you can see I REALLY shouldn't be thinking of hitting that buy butten. But I just know what will happen once I do get that incubator.

I wanted to add that learning about the different breeds and which would be for me and looking into everything is lots andlots of fun. This is the first forum I check each day to see if theres anything new. It used to be the daylily or Iris forums I checked first but no longer.

Go ahead and tease me, I know I am well on my way to be totally hooked LOL :-))

Yes chickens are pretty irresistible !

Do allll the research you want.. LOL It will be useless when you start hatching.. cause you will want to raise a few of each... LOL They all have personalities, and some are just too hard to resist.. then others are endangered, so that's a good reason to hatch more.. then there are the friendly ones, and the blue egg.. it goes on and on... :)

It's a wonderful world, hatching is.. raising babiez to maturity is something special.. Holding a wet wobbly bumbly chick is absolutely amazing..
Having a chick run to your hand to hide and feel safe and make those little wut wut sounds melts your heart...

So yeah, have fun.. there are times it's really hard, there is so much to learn, some things the hard way.. but personally, I wouldn't trade it for the world. :)