# shipping eggs ?



## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

I have a question, Has any one ever mailed eggs to someone and had their breeders hatch them. I've done this with chicken eggs as it was cheaper than buying the chicks. I was thinking if it could be done, that would be cheaper to get some new blood in the flock without having prisoners or buy a kit. but would it work? maybe the pigeon egg is too fragile for mail, but the bantam eggs I got were small and I got hatches out of them with a incubator. It was just a thought I had, any opinions?


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## Lovebirds (Sep 6, 2002)

spirit wings said:


> I have a question, Has any one ever mailed eggs to someone and had their breeders hatch them. I've done this with chicken eggs as it was cheaper than buying the chicks. I was thinking if it could be done, that would be cheaper to get some new blood in the flock without having prisoners or buy a kit. but would it work? maybe the pigeon egg is too fragile for mail, but the bantam eggs I got were small and I got hatches out of them with a incubator. It was just a thought I had, any opinions?


I've never done it, but one of our members shipped an egg to another member because they wanted a pet pigeon. He incubated the egg (with an incubator I guess, not sure) and raised that spoiled bird right from the egg.  I guess the main thing would be if the egg is fertile. No way to tell for a few days and then if you ship it, it wouldn't survive. You'd have to ship freshly laid eggs and HOPE they are fertile and then the person needs to have birds ready to sit and hatch them out. Raising chickens in an incubator is much easier than getting every one on the same page with a pigeon egg. But I guess it could be done with coordination on everyone's part,including the foster pair of pigeons.


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

Lovebirds said:


> I've never done it, but one of our members shipped an egg to another member because they wanted a pet pigeon. He incubated the egg (with an incubator I guess, not sure) and raised that spoiled bird right from the egg.  I guess the main thing would be if the egg is fertile. No way to tell for a few days and then if you ship it, it wouldn't survive. You'd have to ship freshly laid eggs and HOPE they are fertile and then the person needs to have birds ready to sit and hatch them out. Raising chickens in an incubator is much easier than getting every one on the same page with a pigeon egg. But I guess it could be done with coordination on everyone's part,including the foster pair of pigeons.


thats true, the foster pair would have to be ready for the eggs. I think it would be more trouble that what it is worth, Oh well it was a thought


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## jbangelfish (Mar 22, 2008)

*Well, you could*

But I think it would be more trouble than it was worth. Most pigeons are not that expensive in the first place. Any breed besides the homing pigeon is easy to keep at your own place within a reasonable acclimation period, especially if you let them nest and have eggs or young before release. If you are able to pick up eggs yourself and bring them home, then I would say that it would be worthwile. People have done this with expensive parrots by bringing them in their pockets and I would not think twice about doing this myself. Once you have eggs, you either need parents to incubate them or you have to incubate them artificially and raise them yourself. Raising a pigeon or dove from day one is not a simple task.

Eggs are quite fragile and they don't have to be broken to be destroyed. If they are thrown around or jostled too much in shipping, they will not hatch. I found this out by buying bantam eggs for hatching back in the 70's. The mail carrier who delivered them read the label "hatching eggs" and asked me if they were hatching now. I said "no" and he literally threw them into the back seat of his car. Not one of them hatched and I blamed the idiot delivery person as the reason. It doesn't matter how fragile something is, it will be thrown by someone.

It's a standing joke among postal and delivery people that if it is labeled "fragile" that means don't throw it over 20 feet. This is just a sad fact of how things are. My wife is a postal worker and delivers mail and she can attest to these idiotic mentalities of the delivery people. I sell various things on ebay and I have learned that you better pack a fragile item and plan on it being dropped from a two story building. This is not too much of a stretch as many items fall from the conveyors that load them onto the planes that deliver them to the world. I have been told this by the people who handle the products.

Eggs are just too fragile to try to pack. While you might keep them from breaking, you cannot protect them from a fall or drop that will break the fine fibers within.

Bill


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