DEAR JOAN: With the price of eggs going up every day, I was thinking about getting some chickens. I haven’t seen any chicks in the stores but my friend says it’s possible to hatch my own from grocery store eggs.
I can’t believe that’s true, but she swears she read something about it on the Internet. Is that true?
— J.G., San Jose
DEAR J.: Yes, it’s possible, but there is way more to the story.
Before trying to hatch any chicks, you need to study up on the art of backyard chicken-keeping. You’ll need special equipment for hatching the eggs; a warm, safe place to keep the chicks; a secure place for keeping them when they are older; and a lot of patience, because the chicks need to be about 4 months old before they start laying.
The big issue: You can’t hatch just any old eggs you get at the supermarket. You need fertilized — sometimes marked as fertile — eggs, and most grocery stores carry the unfertilized kind.
You can find videos and Reddit posts from people who buy Trader Joe’s fertilized eggs and hatch them. And it’s not just chickens. A Northern California farm animal rescue group, the Funky Chicken, saved a duck, later named Lizzie, who was part of a shipment of balut eggs. Lucky for Lizzie, the shipment arrived late, and she hatched in the carton.
You’ll have to break some eggs to find out if the ones sold as fertile actually are. Crack one open and look for a perfectly round white spot on the yolk. That’s the germinal disc and an indication the egg is fertile. If the spot is faint and oblong, the egg isn’t fertilized.
The age of the fertilized eggs also matter. Birds that lay multiple eggs over a period of days practice delayed incubation. Which means they wait until they’ve laid their entire clutch, before they start sitting on them full time. This means that despite the age of the eggs, they will all hatch relatively close in time. Without the delay, the chicks would hatch several days apart, making it difficult for the parents to keep the remaining eggs warm while corralling new hatchlings.
So if the fertilized eggs haven’t been exposed to refrigeration for too long, there’s a chance they’ll hatch. You likely won’t get a full dozen, but you might get three or four.
If you’re serious about raising chickens, read some books on the topic, talk to experienced poultry folks and get your coop set up — and consider instead adopting rescued farm hens that are already producing. Also be aware that avian flu is in our area and precautions are required to protect flocks as well as wild birds and you, your family and pets.
DEAR JOAN: Does putting pennies in a bag of water and hanging it around your patio keep flying insects away?
— Leon M., Antioch
DEAR LEON: Nope. It’s an old folk remedy that supposedly kept flies from buzzing around. The theory is that the pennies cause weird light refractions or that they look like giant insect eyes, which personally would keep me off your porch. But flies? Not so much.
Animal Life runs on Mondays. Contact Joan Morris at AskJoanMorris@gmail.com.