Egg Selection for Shipping: Breeder’s Responsibility and Customer’s Responsibility

As this year’s quail hatching egg shipping season has peaked and now I can breathe again, let’s discuss egg selection from both sides of the ordering experience.

I would consider myself a mid-size quail breeder. There are a few farms who ship to individuals that are way bigger than me. Majority will be smaller though. I am going to use my Fees as the example for this discussion.

I have 9 Fee breeder sets. This would equate to @45 hens and 9 roosters. This is 45ish eggs per day. If you order 18 Fee hatching eggs from me, I will select eggs from all the sets and try to get eggs that do not look alike. Hen’s are suppose to lay the same pattern every time, I have never studied this, but assuming it is true, then I package eggs from 18 different hens. This means that if a hen or a rooster was “off” that day, you would only get one egg from them. According to ChatGBT, the probability of my selecting the exact same item out of 45 is one in a trillion, which means it is statistically impossible for me to select 18 unfertilized eggs. I say I select from all the breeder sets equally, which is my word, and that is all you have to go on since you cannot stand here and watch me. The flip side is you need 200 fee hatching eggs, this would take me 4-5 days to collect. This means the eggs will be a bit older at ship date, not a huge deal, and more importantly, your starter birds will be closely related.

Now having said all this, my farm is how I want it and the size I can handle to maintain quality and enjoyment. I have to guess at what will sell the most at peak season way back in the fall. Last year, celadons were flying as fast as they laid, this year it is pharoahs. As a human, we cannot see the future and as breeders, we do the best we can with what we have. As a business person, I try to conduct myself professionally, but there are some caveats unique to this business. I am not techy. I cannot guess how many females will be in a hatch. I cannot guess when the fan will burn up in an incubator and I lose a hatch. I cannot forecast the weather and how it impacts laying. I am working with live animals and while I know my animals and have good facilities, I am human and they are birds and well, sometimes we do not see eye to eye on running a business.

Back to my point, I will do as I say, the best I can, at the fastest rate I can. I will package them all the same and send them off in hopes they are treated well on their journey.

Now to the customer’s side of the equation. Customers should research the bird they are ordering, read these blog posts, watch youtubes, listen to podcasts. Then find a breeder who matches their expectations the best. IF you need genetic diversity, don’t order 500 eggs from someone with 3 breeder sets. Ask how they are packaged, are they NPIP, what is fertility rate.

Let’s digress for a minute, hatch rate and fertility rate are very different. As a seller, I am hatching weekly to test fertility. In a perfect world, it will be 100%, but alas we are not in a perfect world. Hatch rate is determined by breeder nutrition, environment, incubating skills, etc. Asking my fertility rate is better information than my hatch rate, both are important though. A breeder’s hatch rate may be lower because we are testing new layers, weeding out the weak, and we shouldn’t be coddling hatches and hospitalizing them.

Off my soapbox now.

Back to the customer side. They should be ready to receive them when shipped, handle them correctly, rest them and have an acceptable incubator ready. Personally, I have blogs, pages and a podcast about incubating. IF you do not follow my instructions and decide google is a better breeder than me, then go for it. Your farm, your rules. The quality of the incubator, how many times it is opened, temperature stability, humidity stability, non slip hatching floor, allowing to dry and fluff are all as important as what the breeder does.

Will there be issues? yes! We are dealing with live animals. Incubators are man made machines that can go haywire,, get unplugged by a cat, be set by a drafty floor register, etc. The hatch rate is not 100% determined by the breeder, it is a 50/50 relationship. Hatch rate guarantees can be set up as a marketing gimmick, you get a credit towards a future purchase. You think you got something, the seller sold more to you. Not saying its a bad relationship, but it is what it is.

Now what to do if hatch rate is bad. Open the eggs and see what’s there and do some research on what stage they quit at. Another blog post coming! LOL. After incubating, you cannot tell if it is fertilized or not. Be honest with your choice in incubator, skill level and mistakes made. Be honest with choice in breeder too! Ebay isn’t a breeder, its a platform for shady people to hide amongst the good ones. Many breeders will work with you to hone in any issues, which IMO, is worth alot. Knowledge will move you forward more than anything else in life. All skills start with failures and the persistence to do better each subsequent time.