Storing fertilized eggs in the fridge - what's the optimal humidity?

[TheFarm41]

Fertilized eggs need to be kept at ambient temp. If you think about what a broody hen will do. . . she will lay eggs regularly for up to a month or so and they will sit in the nest at room temp. After she is satisfied with her clutch her hormones will kick in and she will become broody. So the first egg laid will be sitting there for a month and the last egg just a day or two. But they won't get activated until she cranks up the heat, and then they will all be on the same schedule and hatch within a day or two of each other.

If it is just a few days before you put them in the incubator there is not much you need to do. If it is longer, I usually bring them in the house and put them in a basket of bedding, and turn the eggs a couple times a day, to simulate mama sitting on the nest and turning the eggs when she is in laying the next one. It would be a fun experiment to date the eggs the day they are laid and then you could see if the fresher eggs have a better hatch rate.

I should add that I have incubated turkey eggs that were over a month old and had a high hatch rate.

 

[Azaia]

In India eggs are stored in the fridge door. When the weather is particularly hot, the viability of ambient room eggs diminishes rapidly. In the fridge door, the eggs get jostled about everytime the door is opened. We just got three "induced" broodies to sit on close to 40 eggs. All from the fridge. Just over three dozen chicks hatched and happily creating a miniature-sized havoc in the barns.

 

[travelbug007]

I found a very detailed guide/article here on the forum, which is great - it just doesn't mention what is the optimal humidity for the first 18 days of incubation.

The hatchery a few miles from me hatches 14000 eggs a week! They told me they set humidity @ 52% and 99.5F with forced air incubating. They said still air incubators need 100.5F (1 degree warmer)... They have around 94%+ hatch rate for commercial broilers, so they know what they are doing.... I'd follow that advice! They also told me collecting eggs for 7-10 days is not a problem but hatch rate drops drastically after that. Hope this helps as lots of anecdotal advice here (which I appreciate) but I also prefer the advice of experts when I can get it....

 

[dekel18042]

I store the eggs I want to hatch in the basement which is cooler than the house. I have pulled eggs from the refrigerator if I want to add a few extra to the incubator or want to hatch more of a particular breed or bird.
I've had excellent luck pulling large fowl eggs from the fridge although I don't make a habit of it.
After I lost my bantam rooster I both saved eggs and pulled some from the fridge. The stored eggs all hatched. None from the fridge did.
A neighbor has good hatch rates after storing her eggs in her root cellar.

 

[chickengr]

my broody laid 1 egg day after I gave her 7 eggs. all 8 hatched so I don't see why fresh eggs should wait for 1 day before setting.

 

[VlkStinu]

Awesome, thank you very much everyone for your insightful replies! Much appreciated! I will not wait when the last egg will be laid and will set them into the incubator right away. So far, I have one egg from yesterday, my other hen is taking a bit of a pause it seems as she hasn't laid for about 3-4 days now. Hopefully, she will resume soon so the eggs don't have to sit for too long.

 

[VlkStinu]

My favorite hen stopped laying just as I started collecting eggs - I hope she will resume soon! So far I've collected two eggs from the dominant hen, she is laying one egg per 2 days. I don't want to start incubating until I collected enough from both.