About a month ago, we purchased some coturnix quail eggs to hatch as well as 2 hovabator incubators. It was $116 to buy 250 eggs, so we figured that was a pretty good deal. My husband is cooking a huge feast for about 100 people over Memorial day weekend and planned to serve quail. If you buy it in the store, it's really expensive ($5+ per bird). We thought this would be a cheaper way to go and we'd have incubators for another time.
Well, we received 269 eggs UPS. The box had huge letters on every side that said "Hatching Eggs." We figured the box would arrive on a Thursday or Friday. Friday came and went with no eggs. We weren't sure what was going to happen because UPS doesn't deliver on Saturdays. Saturday morning, my husband went down to the gate and found the box which looked like it'd been dropped over the gate. It wasn't there at 9pm on Friday, so it must have been delivered late Friday. It got REALLY cold that night. Of the 269 eggs, 228 were not cracked. Many had been jostled out of their slots. The packaging looked more than adequate and we don't feel it was the hatchery's fault at all but blame UPS for the poor delivery. My cell number was clearly on the label and a quick call would have been more that adequate.
Anyway, of the 240 (I decided to incubate 12 I was pretty certain wouldn't hatch just in case) we incubated, about 75 hatched (31%). (Quail have a 60% hatching rate normally.) Of those, about 45 survived to adulthood (18%). We won't do that again. It was a total waste of money. I won't accept UPS for eggs again anyway, that's for sure.
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