MY EXPERIMENT ON STORING EGGS FOR INCUBATION

Thursday, April, 19th.
I was ready to throw out the remainder of the unhatched eggs in the incubator Tuesday night and heard, "peeping". I lifted the top of the incubator and, SURPRISE, we had 14 more chicks that had hatched. The total days from setting to the last hatching was 26. As a rule of thumb, so to speak, and in my experience, (which is 15 years and many, many,successful hatches), quail incubation takes anywhere from 19 to 23 days. The temperature is kept at a constant, 99.9F, and the eggs are turned daily, (I suggest the, LITTLE GIANT, Forced air incubator and egg turner). The hatch rate will depend on the quality of your eggs and the breeder from which you purchased them.
I have read many, many articles on storing eggs that will be incubated. I will not get into who was wrong or who was right but, I will tell you what works for me. In this past hatch, I did an experiment to find out if the information I found on the net was indeed correct. The egg turner I use holds 120 quail eggs. My quail lay on average, 20 to 40 eggs a day, and sometime I only get 15 or 16. So, to fill the incubator, I needed to find a way to store eggs until I had collected enough to set them at the same time. From all the research I did, I found a consensus that if the eggs were allowed to reach a temperature above 75 Degrees F, the embryo would start to develop and should be started immediately. If the temperature of the egg was allowed to cool to below, 54 F, it would kill the embryo. The way to prevent this from happening was to store the eggs in a controlled climate with a temperature between, 55 F & 65 F, with a humidity level of around 70%, and stored small side down and tilted daily to prevent the yolk from sticking to one side. I started wondering, "how was I going to keep the suggested temperature, and humidity in the warm climate of Western SC"?  I read about some that used a cooler and dry ice. Some that simply refrigerated them in their household, (much to the dislike of their significant others, I'm sure, lol). I also found some that were just to "out there" to mention.
So I conducted my own experiments on storing eggs for incubation, and here are the procedures I used and the results,
I collect eggs in the afternoon upon arriving home from work, which is 6pm to 7pm . The eggs are layed in homemade nesting boxes, 6" wide 5" high and 8"deep. They sit on the ground inside the flight pen with pine straw and leaves as nesting material. Depending on the time the eggs are layed, they could sit in the nesting boxes for up to 8 or more hours.
On the first day of the incubation collection experiment, I collected 32 eggs. The eggs had been layed that same day and the outside temperature reached a high of 86 F. I put those eggs in a small cardboard box lined with an old T shirt and covered them another. I left them sitting on the counter out of direct sunlight. The house thermostat is usually set on around 78 F. I tried to place them all small side down but, some would not cooperate and fell over.
Day 2, was unusually warm and reached almost 90 F. I collected 28 eggs and I put them in the refrigerator in our camper. I had set the temperature and allowed it to stabilize at 63 F on the top shelf and 58 F on the bottom. I put a 9" X 9" plastic container on the bottom for humidity, and split the eggs to 14 on the top shelf and 14 on the bottom. The shelves are like a grill and the eggs fit perfect, small side down, leaning against each other. I stored them small side down and tilted them from front to back daily, to avoid the yolk from sticking to one side.
Day 3, It was another warm day at 88 F and I collected 39 eggs I had an idea at work that day and decided to try it. I used post hole diggers to dig a hole, 18" deep. I then put the eggs in layers with old T shirts in a 1lb plastic coffee can. I put the plastic lid on and inserted a 1/2" piece of SCH 40 PVC, long enough to stick out above ground level, and set it in the bottom of the hole. I back filled the hole with a layer of dirt on top of the can about 6 ". Since the coffee can is about 5 1/2 " tall, this left about 6" that I packed with pine straw and leaves. The reasoning was that the ground temperature stays about 55 F after 12" or so. I just arranged them on their sides and any other way they happened to be placed.
Day 4, the temperature was 84 F and I collected 27 eggs. I thought I would get enough this day to start incubating so, I started up the incubator the night before to get the temperature and humidity stabilized. Even though I was only 4 eggs shy of a full incubator, and I was conducting an experiment, I decided to leave all the eggs of that day and collect them the next day. I marked them all with an "X" in pencil, so I would know the next day which ones were from the day before.
Day 5, When I collected, I had a total of 65 eggs. I picked out the 27 with my "X" on them plus 4 more to make a full incubator and boiled the rest to eat.
Stay tuned, Ill disclose which eggs didn't hatch, which ones did, and the order in which I placed them in the incubator.

First hatch of the season.

Well, its spring again and time to get the eggs in the incubator or under your favorite brood hen. I had 120  BOBWHITE QUAIL eggs, (from my own stock), in the incubator and had 98 of them hatch out over the course of three days. Quail are surprisingly easy to raise in captivity and can be a life saver in the, “post SHTF” situation. You see quail, when released onto property with 1 or several, callback boxes, will pretty much forage and fend for themselves during the day and return to the call back box at night to roost, (or eat when food supply is limited, because I suggest keeping scraps of leftover greens, rice, wheat or bread crumbs, as well as clean water in the boxes). There are many sites on the net with instructions on how to build a callback box or, if you choose, there are sites that sell prefab and complete boxes. This takes the burden from the individual of family trying to survive on meager supplies or has resorted to only pre-packaged, canned or dehydrated vegetables and fruits. This scenario of raising quail, will provide a meat supply, without having to feed them your valuable food, other than any leftovers you may want to keep in the box..
With the callback boxes, quail can be released in the morning and will return in the evening or whenever they feel threatened. Another plus to quail over chickens is, that quail are virtually undetectable once released and they don’t, “crow”, in the morning, which is a quick way to tell everyone within half a mile that, “Hey yall, we have chickens”.
More pictures and information on the callback boxes in upcoming posts.