Can i hatch an egg from the grocery store

Most eggs sold commercially in the grocery store are from poultry farms and have not been fertilized.

In fact, laying hens at most commercial farms have never even seen a rooster. Given the right nutrients, hens will lay eggs with or without having been in the presence of a rooster.

For an egg to become fertilized, a hen and rooster must mate prior to the formation and laying of the egg. While the MSU Extension science team encourages youth to ask questions and discover answers, this is one experiment we suggest you only read about instead. Because, unfortunately, the only thing that would emerge from an egg under your pillow would be an unpleasant smell.

For more information about 4-H learning opportunities and other 4-H programs , contact your local MSU Extension office. This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. Margaret Manchester, the managing director of Durham Hens, which supplies hens to the hobbyist market, points out that even a fertilised egg is not a living creature. Indeed, in the days when most eggs came from farms that kept cockerels, almost all eggs would have been fertilised.

She says you can spot a fertilised egg by looking at the yolk: in place of a usual small white spot, you will see a ring. But it is a myth that the presence of blood spots is a sign that the egg is fertilised. Hatching chicks is not something you should try without being properly prepared!

The best advice I can give you is to check out Cackle Hatchery. This is one of the largest online hatcheries stocking a wide range of hatching eggs, all the kit you need to incubate and hatch eggs, and everything else you could possibly need to get started. Click here to see the range of hatching eggs and hatching equipment Cackle Hatchery has available. The second point I covered above is that an egg needs to be incubated for around 21 days to be able to hatch.

Incubation is essentially the process by which chickens provide adequate warmth to their eggs to stimulate and sustain embryo growth.

The egg needs to be kept within a certain temperature range for a set time period. Generally speaking, this means keeping the temperature and humidity around the egg around degrees Fahrenheit. Which, as you can imagine is not easy without the help of an incubator or a live hen! We can, and probably do eat fertilized eggs at times, yes.