I live in Arizona and we are into our 100+++ temps now and I was thinking... as I was picking up eggs last night and realized how warm they were......if I take them into the house and put them into my cool room with the batch I'm saving to put into the incubator in a couple of days...their going to cool down and then I'm going to warm them back up again...and none of that sounded like a good thing for viability....right? Anyone have any experience with this?????
Not personally--but I was reading, possibly in Stromberg's book on hatching chicks, about a method of maximizing the hatch from incubating eggs. It involved holding them at incubation temps for some short period, like 24 hours, then candling them, observing any development, then cooling them down again to hold for the rest of the clutch. The author said that the embryo would go back into dormancy until it was put back into the incubator. So maybe the initial heating up won't hurt. Chickens originally came from the tropics so they may tolerate this?
I don't know the answer to your question Sarah.....I am still learning too. That is so interesting Catscan.
I don't know much about all of this yet, but I was wondering if this isn't the same concept behind a hen laying an egg, maybe coming back several times to lay more eggs, heating up and cooling the eggs each time she sits to lay and then getting back up and the eggs cool down, then she makes up her mind to sit on them and is successful. I don't think I would personally try to hatch eggs in the incubator that had been heated up and cooled so many times, it might not be that successful, but it seems to work for the hens. How cool is that?
my concern would be how hot they get before hte cool down. for best incubation eggs should be cooled down and then stored at 45-60 degrees F to suspend the endoplast?.... the sooner you collect and cool them down, the longer they will keep till incubation time and the higher your hatch rate.
i'm not incubating now, just selling eating eggs. i had to pitch a coupld dozen last week becasue i was concerend about the hot tmeps. maybe i should have incubated them instead of pitching them.... but i promised DH no more in the bator...
Sarah, finally got those frizzle cochin chicks. a white pullet notdisplaying, and a red cock that is practiaclly corkscrewed and still half naked at four weeks LOL...
tf
am I right in thinking that cooling it down WAY too fast, like a sudden temp drop would render the egg unviable?
sounds logical to me ladybug
MollyD
Hi ladybug--I think you are right once the egg has developed to a certain extent. I'm not sure if you had a dormant egg that the temp drop would be bad unless it was to below 40-45. You usually try to hold dormant hatching eggs at about 45-50.
