Chicken

[Sherry1]

I've just seen eggs for sale on eBay. These are for hatching. How on earth can they post eggs and they will still hatch??? Don't they have to be kept warm?? Or am I just showing my stupidity?
Sherry x

[Ethel]

Eggs go in to a form of 'animated suspension' if they are kept cool for up to 15 days.

Once incubation starts and they warm up, they start to develop.

They can be sent through the post.

http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/Buying-Hatching-Eggs -on-EBAY_W0QQugidZ10000000000745347

[Catso]

To confirm what ethel says, they only need to kept warm once development of the chick has got underway. If they are kept cool from laying, it won't start developing.

I believe this is so that the bird can amass a clutch of eggs and then start incubating them, so they all hatch at pretty much the same time. This is how hens seem to do it, anyway.

[WendyS]

I found this question (and the two responses) fascinating. Does this mean that if I buy half a dozen newly laid eggs which are only a few days old, and then put them in a consistently warm environment I could actually start hatching chickens from them?
We buy newly laid eggs from a neighbour's daughter who produces them for pocket money. Could I really raise chicks from them if I kept them warm? I can't imagine my husband's face if he came down into the kitchen (or wherever) one morning to find we had a batch of newly hatched chicks on our hands.

[Catso]

Fundementally - yes.

Providing they were fertilised, or course. You need a reasonably constant temperature, they have to be kept a bit moist (IE not bone-dry heat) and turned over every day or so. Do all that and you should get some chicks. Depends on the parents, of course, but when I kept free range hens the hatch rate was about 80%.

[meltoadhall]

i have bought eggs from ebay and hatched 5 out of 6 chicks. as ethel said they dont do anything until they are incubated by hen or machine

[heathfield]

Just a reminder that the eggs sold in shops and supermarkets aren't fertilised and therefore won't hatch!

[Sherry1]

WOW That was fasinating. Thank you all for your answers. Like you WendyS I had visions of fluffy chicks hatching out of my eggs but that idea was squashed as I read Heathfields answer... sadly my eggs are supermarket bought.
Once again many thanks to you all
Sherry x

[WendyS]

Now you're all going to have to excuse my ignorance, but exactly how are eggs fertilised if they're going to be used for hatching chicks, as opposed to the supermarket ones on sale which arn't.

And how would I know whether my neighbour's eggs are the former or the latter?

[Sherry1]

Hasn't it got something to do with a cockerel Wendy S... It sounds reasonable but I've already shown my ignorance on the subject of Chicken and eggs
x

[wildwood]

Oh Wendy, Wendy, Wendy..... were you not listening when the story of the birds and the bees was explained to you? To get fertilised eggs there needs to be a rooster present with the hens. When he DOES his thing the sperm swims up the oviduct and when it meets a 'ripe' egg the successful sperm is let in - pretty much like a mammal. The sperm and the eggs release hormones and become a zygote, divides a few thousand times, and then goes into suspension - in mammals they call this delayed inplantation. The egg is laid and when it eventually receives the right amount of warmth it restarts development and after 24 hours the warmth can not be stopped or the embryo dies.
Most of the eggs in the supermarket are from battery-hens so no rooster present - no fertile eggs.

Now, to make a Human baby you need a woman and a man who together need to ...............................................

[hope28]

Couldn't stop laughing at the last post. LOL (real funny).

Must admit I did not know anything about how to get chicks out of an egg without the hen or the rooster.