A Lesson in Forced Optimism

Well, I've decided to dust off the old blog for a potential exercise in futility. After writing draft 1 complete with bile and vitriol, I've decided to dial it back and hope for the best. I've never actually hatched eggs before. (Which is what I'm doing. Have I mentioned that? I guess now I have.) I've only ever read about it, and books tend to involve more cautionary advice than real life tends to warrant. Maybe things will be just fine.

SO. Here's day #1* of my hatching adventure.

I'd like to say I left this moring giddy at the prospect of retrieving my purchased hatching eggs from a local-ish hatchery/breeder 4 hours south of where we currently live. The truth is, even though I went to sleep early, I was barely able to drag myself out of bed and get out the door on time. Maybe it's post-election depression, or maybe it was a vague precognition of the anxiety I would be facing hours from then when I would discover the less-than-stellar condition of my hatching eggs.

Did I say I was done with the vitriol? Yeesh.

Maybe it's because I've spent years building up to this point, finally got myself an incubator for Christmas and ordered purebred hatching eggs, a less expensive option than ordering live purebred chicks, but still not cheap. My whole money-saving theory is built around the idea that the eggs will hatch. And going to a local breeder, driving instead of having them shipped, will give me the best chances for success, right?

I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I get there (ok, yes, at this point having squealed with excitement as I approached the final freeway exit) and prepare myself to meet my eggs. Disappointment does not begin to cover how I felt. As the owner came outside and gave me the eggs, she opened them up and showed them to me. I could see from the cartons that they were smaller than an average chicken egg, which my book studies explicitly state can result in sickly hatchlings due to stunted growth.

Ok yes, my hands are big, but not THAT big...

But hey, I've never hatched my own eggs before, so what was I to know? Maybe that was fine. Then I saw the dirt/poo smears. SHE also saw the dirt/poo smears and seemed surprised. Was this the first time she'd seen the eggs too? She then proceeded to tell me to just wash them off with a wet paper towel and they would be fine. Every book I've read on the subject says not to incubate dirty eggs.

But again. I've never done it before. Maybe that was an overly restrictive view and they'd actually be fine. How was I supposed to know? That's the entire reason why I decided to buy from a local breeder. I thought I could trust a higher standard of care than I would get from a commercial hatchery. So, not knowing if or how to confront any of this due to my lack of experience, I just took them and left. Then about a mile away, pulled over and called my husband to complain while I inspected them more closely. Almost all of them are half the size of a normal chicken egg.

Seriously! Look at the size difference!!

And I also noticed that some of them were almost as round as a ping pong ball. Another hatching no-no I came across while reading.

"Too Round" Oh, you mean like this almost identical example from real life? Great.

Even that big brown one pictured above next to the small one looks eerily similar to the oblong egg pictured in the book.

SO.

I'm letting them rest, blunt side up, in a cooler area of the house for a few hours. Then, I'm going to mix up a warm, very diluted bleach mixture (internet** says 1/2 tsp of bleach per 2 quarts of water at 100 degrees) and gently remove the ick from the dirty eggs. Then I'm going to put them in the incubator and hope for the best. Because I haven't done this before, and maybe this is all just my anxieties getting the best of me.

Guess we'll find out in 3 weeks.


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*If you don't include the years of planning, dreaming, researching, and gradual implementation that led us up to this point...and also led to my deep sense of disappointment.

** Yes, I frantically googled all of my issues the minute I got home to either confirm or discredit my fears. It's about 50/50, as it usually is with anecdotal evidence on the internet.