Videos are posted on the Internet and articles are written about how quails have been successfully bred from eggs intended for food and purchased at a retail outlet. Intuitively, there should be a difference between eggs sent for sale as a food product and those from which offspring are expected to be produced. And yet, do quails hatch from store-bought eggs or is this pure myth?
Is it possible to hatch quails from store-bought eggs?
In order to get chicks, certain conditions must be met.
What does it take for quails to hatch?
Irrefutable success factors: eggs should not be dry and there should be no cracks in the skin. Checking these characteristics is quite simple. When shaking, no sound should be heard from the egg. To identify visible defects among the selected samples, use an ovoscope or any strong lighting device. In this way the following are viewed:
- microcracks;
- double yolk;
- blood spots;
- mold on the inner surface of the shell;
- correct placement of the yolk and air chamber.
The yolk should be in the middle of the mass, a little closer to the blunt side. At the wide end of the shell there is an air chamber.
The best results are obtained by incubating eggs laid no earlier than a week before being placed in the incubator. They are disinfected with a weak solution of potassium permanganate, or even better, with ultraviolet radiation for 1.5 minutes on each of the opposite sides.
Quality of store goods
Neither GOSTs nor technical specifications require eggs intended for consumption to hatch into chickens of any kind or breed. Risks when using store-bought raw materials:
- it is impossible to control the degree of freshness down to the day;
- transportation conditions are less gentle than for incubation material;
- the probability of fertilization may be zero.
The shelf life of table quail eggs is 30 days at a temperature of 0-8 °C. Using the example of chicken products, especially those with white shells, the naked eye can see that almost all eggs intended for food have a thin coating with large, almost through cracks.
When they buy eggs in a store, they don’t know whether males were allowed to lay eggs.Quails belong to the order Galliformes and lay eggs without fertilization.
Farmers claim that without a cockerel, females behave more calmly. It happens that even if a quail is present, the eggs are unfertilized. Hatching chicks from such material is impossible according to the laws of nature.
Application of incubator
Quails become brood hens unpredictably. Therefore, when starting to hatch chickens, poultry farmers buy an incubator. It is necessary for the industrial stable production of quail offspring. The dimensions of the incubator vary depending on the needs of the buyer.
Incandescent lamps heating the tray with embryos create a natural incubation temperature of 25-40 °C. The lower limit models the moment when the hen stands up, the upper limit models the temperature of the mother's body. The device has a thermostat and a device for automatically turning eggs. Two days before the chicks hatch, rotation is stopped.
The incubator is turned on 3 hours before laying, setting the temperature to 38.2 °C. Eggs are brought from cool storage into a warm room and warmed to room temperature. After filling the incubator for 2 hours, the thermostat is in the same position. Eggs hatch on the 17th day.
Further care
If he wants to get stable results and not waste time and energy, the poultry farmer constantly uses an ovoscope. The actions of the operator monitoring the incubation process are described in the table.
| Hatching period, days | Care procedure |
| 1-7 | Temperature – 37.8 °C, humidity – 50-55%. 3-4 turns per day. No need to ventilate. |
| 8-14 | Temperature – 37.8 °C, humidity – 45-50%. Turn over the masonry once every 5 hours. Ventilate the incubator 2 times a day for 15-20 minutes. to avoid the embryo sticking to the shell. |
| 15-17 | The temperature cannot be lowered below 37.4 °C so that the parameters of the internal and external environments do not differ greatly. Humidity – 60-65%. |
The first hatched quails can be left for a day or two near their unborn comrades. After the appearance of the last chick, the babies are kept in an incubator until all the plumage is completely dry. The group is then transferred to the nursery.
No one will dare to state categorically that no chicken can be born from store-bought eggs. Miracles do happen.
