Not All Eggs Are Created Equal — Egg Selection for Hatching

Think you can just toss any egg in the incubator? Think again. In this episode of Poultry Nerds, we go nest box to incubator — sorting real eggs by weight, shape, shell quality, and cleanliness to show you exactly what to set and what to skip. We cover large fowl, quail, and celadon eggs, break down double yolkers, torpedo shapes, golf balls, and the perfect 67-gram specimen. Plus — a listener question about noisy roosters and how to keep your neighbors from losing their minds. Whether you're brand new or refining a breeding program, this one's packed with practical knowledge.

🐣 Topics covered: gram weight ranges, egg shape, shell texture, dirty vs. washed eggs, quail egg selection, celadon quirks, separating hatching baskets by egg quality, and why your hatch rate problems might start at the nest box — not the incubator.

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Transcript

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Welcome poultry nerds. Today we're gonna talk about egg selection, but I'm excited, but I couldn't help it. I'm sorry. But first we're gonna answer a question that we have been emailed to gonna answer an email. That was sent to us to answer the question, did I say that right? Fan mail question? Yeah. Yeah. Because like on our last episode, some, someone had asked me a bunch of questions and we were like, Hey let's start doing that. Yeah. And is it help a whole bunch of people, like people actually listen to the podcast and started sending us questions? Yep. So let's have it. This week's question was about Rooster Crows and she has, she lives in a neighborhood. But her neighbors seemed to be complaining a little bit about the rooster crowing, and wanted to know if we had any ideas on how to quiet them down a little bit to keep her neighbors happy'cause she didn't wanna give up her chickens. Now I answered the email. I know you did not. So you give your answer and then I am going to tell you what I told her. So first thing that comes to my mind is your neighbors suck. Get some new ones. That's why we get along so well. And I understand. I really do. But living in a neighborhood. If your roosters were crowing in the middle of the night I could see that, but to me, roosters making noise in the morning time or in the afternoon is no different than kids playing. Dog barking. Kids are yelling and screaming and acting obnoxious. Roosters are yelling and screaming and acting obnoxious. Dogs horseplaying doing crazy stuff. I read in the neighborhood, one of the neighborhood pages near where I live. This lady was pretty much irate because her neighbor's dog dropped a deuce in her yard. And I'm like I, being the nice guy that I set, I am, I said, have you tried talking to the neighbor? It's not my responsibility to tell people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You might, you actually do live in the country and your neighbor might not think free fertilizer dries you nuts. Sometimes just talk to people. But in this case, if getting a new neighbors isn't an option, take'em some eggs, bake'em a cake. Just be nice to'em every now and then, and it should probably all work out. So I emailed her back last night and my reply was. Can you have roosters like legally with the codes and stuff? Now, I do not know the answer to that question in this particular scenario, but assuming that the answer is yes, then her happiness with her birds is no less important than her. Their neighbor's happiness getting what they want. That is true. If the neighbor's dog was outside barking, would you go over there and say, Hey, your dog is obnoxious and I hate it. Would you shut it up? No, but for some reason, oh, would you call animal control for people think that's okay with a rooster. I also suggested maybe some shrubbery'cause soft things could absorb some sound, maybe. Yeah. A water feature. Oh yeah. Drown it out. Drown it out. Some of it. I also suggested getting guineas for the summer, so by the fall they would be okay with just the rooster growing. If they got some guineas and then the neighbors like, really did go nuts, and they're like, you know what, that's fine. They've ate all the bugs out of our yard. We'll get rid of'em. Can we keep our little roosters? They're little roosters. They're cute. They're like, yeah, they don't make nowhere near the noise. Them things do. So Yep. It's a indirect win-win and then a new no. There are such a thing as Rooster Callers. I do not have any firsthand knowledge with them. I did do a little reading on'em, and they're just basically a little. Caller that you put tight enough that it doesn't allow the rooster to extend his neck as far, and that is, he can't get the projection of the noise out. It said, eh, maybe works, maybe doesn't me like low level choking the animal. Yeah, exactly. And. I wouldn't do that. I would be more likely to take'em to a vet and have their vocal cords severed. I suggested bringing'em inside at night and covering'em like a parakeet. Yeah, but nighttime's not usually when they do it. I know, but they would still be in, in the morning that way. True. Put'em in the garage. But assuming it was legal I can be a little saucy. I would probably move them closer to the neighbors. But that's just me. It is really nice to take chickens to fresh grass. You could take'em over there right next to your neighbors and leave'em over there for a few days and then move them away. And then they're like, they don't, okay. I can deal with this. It's not as bad as them being right there. And then, they may be like, if, maybe if we don't say anything, they'll leave them on the other side of the yard. But in the whole scheme of things, just being like realistic here, the world is getting more crowded. If you bought a piece of land that you are allowed to have birds on, then enjoy your birds. That is not, the neighbors bought there also because they had the freedom to do what they wanted to do. So don't be feeling bad because you're doing what you wanna do. If this can, if this HOA trend continues, they're gonna tell us what color cars we can have, and at some point people have to put their foot down. But we're getting on my soapbox. I'm gonna leave it alone. I do live out in way far in the country and there's no restrictions out here. But I've tangled with my neighbors here a little bit just because they weren what have a restriction in the county I live in. Yeah. You can have birds here. You're for them to hook up electricity to your house, it must be more than 999 square feet. That's it. Apparently Jefferson County hates tiny houses. I think most do. We don't have'em here either. All right. You ready to talk about egg selection? And I'm always ready to talk about egg selection. All right, so this is because it depends on so much, but again, I would say that the egg selection, it is gotta start with goals, right? Yeah. You have to start somewhere. When we talk about this egg selection now the pictures I used are actually pictures from my birds. So if you're raising polish or silkies or something that lay little dainty eggs, obviously the weights are gonna be different. And honestly, the weights on my orpingtons would be different then the weights that I used here.'Cause the chickens I used are breast eggs and the slides. But you've gotta start somewhere. So if you're just starting out, you're gonna incubate everything because you need'em all to get started. But as you start refining your birds, you wanna select for egg selection also. Yeah, you do. And so this is assuming that you are to that point when you're refining your birds. So like for a bird, let's say a large foul. Your Rhode Island reds, your American breasts, you wanna be at a large size egg.'cause that's what they're supposed to weigh according to the standard. You're gonna want to incubate me. I don't incubate anything less than 56, 57 grams. Up to 65 ish. Now, I will say that's not a hard set rule because for science I have done things and one of the ones that I did recently. That was actually a lot, drastically different than what I thought it would be. If you have like a silky and that bird calls for a small sized egg, then you're gonna want something in that 42, 43 44. Somewhere in that gram range, and I'm guessing an orpington that weighs 10 pounds is gonna be like 65, 70 ish gram. No, actually they are smaller than the breast eggs. No. They lay small, the eggs that small, they're gonna be. In the 55 to 60 ranged when I set them. So they'll be like a regular large foul. So my breasts, I set between 60 and 70. I don't set anything smaller and 60. And if my trays are full, I'll pull the 60 out and leave. Then it becomes 61. And the funny thing about that is a lot of people are like, oh, those are double yos if they're seventies or whatever. No. You've been doing this for a little while and I've had'em for a little while, and you bigger eggs get bigger birds, and that's how you grow your genetics and you have to know your birds, you have to know your line, and I can almost. I would say 99% of the time, quail, breasts, orpington, duck, Turkey. I can hold it, tell you if it's a double yore or not, because I know my birds. I can't go to the neighbors across the street and pick up their birds. I would not know if those were double yokers or not.'cause I don't know those eggs. I don't know what they lay. Yeah, I mean I can pick up some quail eggs and be like, which pin did this come out of? No, that's the ones I'm still working on. This one definitely ain't a double yore. And then, then I'll find a double yore and I'll get really. Frustrated because then I have to take all the hens out and see if they repeat offenders or if it was an accident. But all right, let's get moving on this'cause I got a lot of slides. Lots. Okay, so this is my little cocaine gram scale. I broke the lid off of it. So just for reference, the little blue pieces of tape are just stuck to the thing so the egg can't roll. But it's all teared out and the picture didn't, I can see the weight on the scale, but just because I know it's a little bit harder to read, I went ahead and wrote it on the top of each slide. And then, oh yeah, you can see it pretty good. Okay, good. I, it, it was, I was sitting on the couch, it was dark and it was like almost 10 o'clock last night when I was doing it. So this one is got a pretty good shape. It's got a good weight because my, I like mine between 60 and 70. It's clean, so it was laid in a clean nest box and it has a nice firm, smooth shell. So I would set this one. Would you? Yes. Yes. There's, there, I don't see anything wrong with that egg. I like how it's very symmetrical. It doesn't have any calcium bumps on it. None of that weird stuff. Yeah. That one's going in the incubator for sure. Yep. Okay. This one is like a little golf ball and it's filthy. So I was gonna say that one, if it's going in the incubator, that it depends on how recently it's been cleaned. Okay. So all of these are sometimes, so incubators can get rough and if my incubator's like I need to clean it this time, or at the end of next time. So I don't set filthy eggs. And I also don't wash eggs. So yeah, these, all these pictures are straight outta the nest boxes. Okay, so this one's only 41 grams. This is the first steak kind of bird? Is that, that it's all, these are all breasts. Oh yeah. That one's getting eight. I ain't even thought if that was a game foul, I would think about it, but I can't. It's too small. Okay. So we're back in the 62 range. We've got a decent shape. It's okay. Clean, not getting too concerned. And the weight's good. So I would set this one. Yeah. Yeah, that's a no brainer. So this one's a little, it's right on the line with weight. So the reason why I took a picture of this egg is when you look at it, it looks like a big egg. But it's only 60 grams. So to me, there's something off with it. Why is it so light? If it's such a large egg? That, that makes sense. There's something off with it. So it, it does have a little bit of a weird shape if you look to the right, it's got a hump out to the right also. Yeah. Can you see it? Yep. And it's a little pointy on the bottom. It's like just a little, it's almost like a little bulge on the side. Yeah. I think when that egg was coming out. And be informed it didn't know which way it wanted to be formed. My guess is that it, the shell is probably a little on the thinner side, and so when it was wet, when it was first laid, it might've taken on a weird shape maybe or something. I don't know. But I would not set this egg, would you? No, it looks funny. All right. This one's just too filthy. This one is just a breakfast egg. I wouldn't go any further. If I was just doing my daily chores, I would stop at that point. This one would just go in the breakfast basket. So here for me, we eat the dirty eggs and I set thele eggs that meet the criteria. That's how we do it. But as far as weight is concerned, it's fine and the shape is fine, but just because it's dirty, it, I would bring in the house for breakfast. You, so for me, to be honest, it depends on how many eggs I got. Yeah. Because if I've already got some breakfast eggs that are going in the house and that son of a gun is in there. That might get tossed in the woods. Really? It's pretty dirty. Yeah but I have another one in here. You'll know when we get to it. So I have one. Breast group. I don't know if she goes traipsing through the mud before she gets in the nest box or what she does, but I always know that these dirty eggs come from that group. Like why do they do that? I don't know. This one's on the smaller side. It's dirty. Looks like a golf ball. So this is an easy no for me. I don't under some chickens, I just. Don't understand. I don't either. This one I wouldn't set it because it doesn't have a proper egg shape. You can see it's almost triangular at the bottom, and then it looks normal at the top, but. If you notice it's got some straw or something stuck to it, so that makes me think that maybe another egg had broken and it got sticky and stuff started sticking to it. And you don't wanna set those kind of eggs either. No. You don't. Yeah. No. This is a good egg. Yeah. So it's, it's not the prettiest. But the shape on it is exactly what an egg should look like. The size is a good size. Yeah it's dirty, but it also not fil it could've flooded rain yesterday. That's not covered in poop. This just picked up something somewhere. Similar to the last one. I would still set it and no, I wouldn't wash it. I would set it just like this. Yeah, I don't wash eggs. Some people do and I don't. That's one of those things that I really don't understand is why you would want to do that, because you know they're gonna be exposed to germs at some point in their. Yep. All right. So this egg is just big. It's 72 grams, it's too big. I have noticed that in my birds, that when I get the eggs are too big, they generally aren't fertilized. So they're not gonna hatch anyway. They're just eggs. This particular wine, it does have a blunt end at the end. It's not, it's misshapen. If you see the shadow there at the bottom, it's got some indentions or shoulders or something going on down there. So this is a, no. This would just come in the house to be eaten. It's a good egg for eating. It's big. Yeah. Do you set big eggs? Not that big. Yeah. It's too big because to me it more often than not when they're that huge, like you said, they're not fertile and it's also getting to where there's slightly a chance that it could be a double yoker or not. So it is, I just don't do it, now that I'm sitting here thinking about it. I don't know that I have seen a double yore in my breasts, huh? I'm gonna have to pay more attention. I would know that the ones that you have now, where they came from, and you should not. All right. This one, this is the epitome of perfect egg to set. 67 grams. It's clean. It's got plenty of room for that chick to move around in that nice wide body there. You definitely know where the blunt end and the pointy end is. To me. This is a fantastic egg to set. Yep. The, I wish they all look like this. Yeah, that is true. Okay, so this one is borderline. I went ahead and gave it a green check mark just because I would set it how, if I needed it, like to finish off the tray, but it would be like the last one to go in. That torpedo shape. I don't feel like it gives the chick enough room to move around because the chick has to turn itself around a zip and I don't feel like this one would allow enough room for it. But it is clean enough. The weight is on point. It just is a little narrow to me. Are you shocked? I gave this one a red X. You'd set that one, wouldn't you? No. Really? No, because I don't like the texture on it. And down at the bottom it's not a smooth, like it's got point. Yeah. Yeah, I don't like that. And it's barely over 60. And if you got a lot of, if you have a lot of better options, that one's not getting set right now. Again, that goes back to what I was talking about, goals because if your goal is to feed some kind of reptile. Then see if it'll hatch. If your goal is to have a breeding flock, then I'd eat that one. Okay, so you bring up a good point. So when I set the quail eggs, I will go through and I will set everything I want to set in order to hatch all the projects the. The good size eggs, the things that I could keep for breeders later. Everything that's worthy of being set. And then once those done, any trays that I have left, I'll just go through and fill and with eggs that would hatch but are definitely not double yokers are too tiny. And I'll actually write on, oh, then you don't want empty room in there. I'll actually write on the tape freeze. I already know I don't want to keep these birds just because of the eggs. Yeah I actually have some in my incubator right now that I wrote freeze on the tray, and there was one tray that I wrote, freeze, except, and that's because it had a lot of big eggs and I'm really curious what they are. So they'll still get frozen. Okay. But I wanna see what they are first. So what you can't do,'cause like normally if I'm gonna freeze them all, the, my, my chamber that I have, my whole hatching basket will fit in. So I'll just put the whole thing in there. But the, I want to see what those are, because again, I already know the correlation and the excise with chickens, but I don't think it's the same way with quail. I'm looking for proof. Now we're doing this as the first selection point, for breeders going forward. The second time you could do it would be moving'em to the hatching basket. You could move. The ones that you definitely love, like some of those eggs were perfect. And then the ones like the torpedo E shaped one, you might put in a secondary basket and separate the hatches that way. And so then you can look at the chicks after they hatch and go, you know what? I'm getting all these nice wide heads from these nice wide eggs. And I'm getting narrow heads from these eggs. And don't take those words, to the mountain here. I don't know myself. Is there a correlation between Whiteheads and a White Egg? I have no idea. You'd have to look at your line. No, there's not. And see if there's a correlation. I would say this in my breasts and in my reds. No, there's not a correlation between head size and wide egg. Okay.'cause some of the reds that I set were on the they weren't pul eggs, but they were like towards the lower end of that range that I would normally set on a red and, but the eggs were like perfectly shaped. The coloring was perfect. They look great. And then when Chick pops out, I start looking at heads and I don't see eyeballs, and they're not like the egg from before that was six inches wide. You could also check for vigor too. Did the chicks hatch easier in these nice white eggs and have a harder time in the torpedo eggs? There's lots of data that you can collect on your birds, your line, and see. It's not hard to separate an egg in a hatching basket, just no, just to gather the data and know, okay, from now on, I'm not gonna set these little golf balls because, they don't hatch, and then you would know going forward, okay, this one right on the line, literally 60 grams is my minimum. But this one is round, it does look like a golf ball. So I don't, I wouldn't set it. This would be out for me. Yeah, that's a golf ball, egg. I like, I need some kind of point because, I understand that we're looking for the round part to have the big air cell on top. But. I don't know. It's like I want somewhere for them to be able to put their feet and push out. I don't know why, but I just I'm not a huge fan of rounded eggs like that. So again, if you're in a situation where you're very limited with what you have and you're trying to build a flock, if you started with a trio or something like that, then I would say hatch everything you can. And call from the results because you don't know yet what your results would be. Like for our breasts. This right here would not give us the desired check that we wanted and we know that. But for somebody else's line, it might. I know a guy that lives down the road that swears that he has the best line and. Has told me that I was lying on my birds. And I told him, I was like, all right buddy.'cause he didn't believe that the ones I had did what I said they did. And so actually gave the guy five eggs and a 10 pound bag of Kickstarter. I said, hatch these suckers out and call me when they're like six weeks old and I want you to hatch out five of years. I want you to feed them all that 10 pound bag of feed. It was like, but if they have the same feed it'll be the same. I said, call me when they're six weeks old and let's talk. Now he is talking about calling this whole flock. It takes time to get to this point. So now on the flip side. Some of these eggs you don't want to ship out. I wouldn't ever ship out a dirty egg or a torpedo egg or any of that kind of stuff. So that is just etiquette as far as I'm concerned. Yeah that's don't be a jerk. Yeah. All right. So now that's all the breast eggs. So now we've got some slides for some quail eggs. So these are just standard quick eggs. Now both of these would be okay, but those are my birds. Now I know that the top one is from my Pharaoh line because they lay really large eggs and the bottom one could be like from my Egyptian or my fees or something. And I know that it's a normal size egg for them. But if I handed that to you and you did not know my birds, you might think that I handed you a single yoker and a double yoker. Somebody would definitely, but when I looked at those, I was like that's a Pharaoh and that's a fee. Because I know that your fees, they look like they're about this big, but when they hatch out, it's like, how did that fit in there? I know, I don't get that. The fees are some biggest birds. The easiest way to explain quail is popcorn. Yep. Yep. Okay. So these are celadons. Now people say that celadons are harder to hatch. That is not a true statement if you select eggs correctly. So what I think is happening is people are just trying to set all of their sellan eggs and not go through this process, and then they think that they're harder to hatch, right? Because these eggs that I have in this picture are not going to hatch. I mean that, that egg on the bottom, that son of a gun's got a hole in the side just cracked all the way around. It looks like one of your pigs tried to eat it, and you're like no, I gotta hatchet. So I did that on purpose just so I would remember it. But the egg looked normal, laying in the egg rollout tray. The shell was so thin that when I picked it up, I could put my finger in it. Yeah. Yeah. Don't see that's, but again I think that's, that is, in my opinion, I agree with you a hundred percent. That's why people think that the sell-ons are so hard to hatch because a lot of people charge like$50 per egg and they don't have a lot of'em themselves. So it may take you a hot minute to get it, and you're so excited to get these 12 eggs. You do your best you're gonna incubate whatever you get. And then when they start laying, you're gonna incubate whatever you can get. And it's and again, you have to start with where you're gonna start with. But as soon as you get let's, if I was starting with a line, as soon as I got say a hundred birds. Then once I had a hundred birds, that was anywhere from eight to 12 weeks old, I'm really gonna sit there and spend probably half a day looking at'em and getting them to convince me why am I gonna keep feeding? And'cause then you know you got a hundred birds. So if you go through and you find something wrong with all but 10 of them, then you have 10 amazing birds and there's not, as long as they're not all roosters, you got something that you can then build a great flock off of. And with quail, crap, they fully mature. I started laying eggs six, seven weeks, fully mature, eight, nine weeks. You know you're ready. You can hatch out like in theory five generations. In a year. But, all right, so the top one is golf ballish looking, but it has a little indentation in it. Like a, not gonna say a peck hole, but definitely some kind of a hole going on. And then the middle one. That one's just a hot mess. That looks like, I don't know. And that thing looked like it was already in the oven when it came out of the, it looked like an egghead, like that's like. That's where Wado is. I will say this, when you have all those spots down on one end, even if it was a perfectly shaped head, egg, then all those spots, speckles, you don't want them all collected on one end of the egg. That's not good either. You want them to be light. That egg right there. The one with a green check. Yep. There you go. That's the perfect Sell it on egg. You have an egg shape, you have a nice firm shell. It's shiny, it's good weight. That's the perfect egg right there. And I know you're doing this under LED lights and you're taking this picture. Yeah. Because I know from seeing your salad on eggs. Outside they are blue. Fun fact people have been asking me why I have gotten out of Len Ons. I can't see the blue. And I've, some people know that Rebecca at Thieving Otter Farm was actually the one that figured out that I couldn't see the blue because I was standing in her barn and I was like, where are your cell ons? And she's right there. Literally right there at your, she right in front of you. And I was like, I don't. I don't see them. And I thought they were supposed to be blue. Yeah. And so she walked over and she's they're right here. Like literally right here. And I was like, oh, I thought those were a White Egg project. So they all look white to me. And so she like took a whole handful and put'em up against a white, post office box. And she said, and you said about now. And I was like, no, they look gray now. So we went outside. We went all over the place, all over her yard, and I can't see the blue. So all these eggs look white to me, and it really does just take the fun out of trying to breed for a blue egg when you can't see it. So that's part of the reason. So if you have been happy with the blue eggs, you can thank my grandson because he's the one that selected the bluest of the blue. When I was setting up the breeders. And then David, of course, has helped me select for blue eggs. But yeah, it's a little, it's a kind of a frustrating part of breeding celadons when you can't actually see them. I think the second reason is I have a new project. And only have so much time in the day and so much space. They had to go. So there they go. You conquered that project. I did. Got bored with it. You're like, you know what, screw it. I can't even see'em anyway. Exactly. Lemme work on something else. Exactly. And that may be why I liked. I did, I always aired to the ones without speckles and that may have something to do with it. Maybe the speckles made it look more gray to me, which they did. Every great, once in a while, one would lay like a robin's egg blue, and I could see that. But just your normal lenon blue. No, I can't see it. All right, so obviously we talked about the one on the left. That's a good egg. The ones to the right, if you wanna just go left to so that one is more torpedo shape, not a good egg. The second one has a blue band around it, not a good egg. The third one is dull. It doesn't have a shiny finish to it. Not a good egg. And the last one is a double yoker because I know my line and I know how big of an egg they lay. And that is double yoker in my birch. Did you cut it open and scramble it? No, they probably got thrown out for the dogs. Actually. My barn cats have decided that they like to eat eggs, so I just drop'em and they eat'em. So a buddy of mine that listens to the podcast. He said, he sends me this picture Sunday, which it was on Easter Sunday, and he said, for the first time in my life I've ate deviled quail eggs, and they're amazing. I said, I told you those eggs. The eggs were good. And I was talking to my son about'em and he was like, dad, I'm gonna have to eat five eggs. Why do I want quail? And I said, lemme send you a picture. So I went and got a picture of a chicken egg and I went and got a picture of a quail egg and another quail egg. And I took that. I was like two quail eggs, one chicken egg, boom. He said, oh, so it only takes two. Oh I thought it, they were a lot smaller. I said, eh, no. Some people's, but not mine. All right, so these are some, these are actually supposed to be regular. These are not selling on eggs. So the one, those are also somebody with OCDs worst nightmare to look at and select. Oh really? Okay. So the one on the left, just'cause they're different size, they're torpedo shape one's got a hole in it yeah, no, there's one that's there. It's okay. Yeah. The one you put the green check on. Okay. So the second one the whitish one that is what I call an unfinished egg. They lay it without putting the spots on it and it kinda might have some smear marks on it. I don't set those could they hatch? Yes. I. I have not separated them long enough to see if the chicks are healthy when they come out of them, but if you ordered quail eggs and I sent you white eggs with smears on'em, would you be happy? No. So why would I set those and. Perpetuate that if it's a genetic marker, it's just not worth the risk, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah. Like that would be one that if I had a bunch, like if I had those eggs, the one with the green check is going over here and a red basket, and all the others would go in blue baskets because I put. I put my breeders in red trays and my feeders in blue to keep'em separate. Two of those are double yokers. The torpedo one. I don't know if it would be or not, but Yeah. I mean it's two torpedo. It's two torpedoes. Yeah. And that, that could be something that would be genetic. And again, when you ship somebody, when people pay you money for hatching eggs. They want eggs that look like they're supposed to look and are like they are supposed to be, and they're not supposed to be torpedo shaped. You know that's my, like I said, this would be a nightmare because if I had a group of 25 that was given me this, then I'm gonna have to, let me grab one of my empty stack and bring it up here.'cause I keep a stack empty just for crap like this. And you separate them heifers out and you find out who the guilty party is. Oh, that was it. That was all our slides. See. Yeah, I thought it was 20 there. You did good. Yeah. You did a great job putting together all the examples. Yes, it's, I did. I took these pictures. I have to admit, I did take these pictures a while back and people knew that I took the pictures'cause I said I would gonna explain egg selection and it's busy season, so time got away from me. Yeah. But to me it's important because if you're selling hatch and eggs, then your name is your reputation. So be selective with what you stick in the foam or however you choose to package. I like quail foam from egg foam.com, you get it wherever you want to get it. But however you package, select quality because you're charging people for quality and if somebody says, Hey look, I want some eggs for my kid to throw an incubator to see what happens then Okay, fine. Just, I would personally. I would just give that person whatever. I would not take their money for that. That's back in the day when your handshake was all you had, that's all you had. And nowadays your name is all you have. So I feel like you should strive to send people quality. So we want, that's why we wanted to talk a lot about egg selection because we have seen, I'm trying to think of a word that's appropriate for all ages, but ridiculous will explain it enough number of egg things on social media lately. And yeah, I would like to make the statement that. We do have the incubation masterclass Facebook group now. If you're not part of that, go join that. But when people say that they had a bad hatch, and they try to blame it on the incubator, yes, it's possible. It could be the incubator's. But to really diagnose the problem, you have to go back and look at the big picture. And egg selection is one piece of that puzzle. Did you set all pull eggs? Did you set all golf balls? Did you. We have to have that information in order to move forward, diagnosing the issue. So that's why I encourage everybody to join incubation masterclass.com because then you get the full picture. You can understand the whole thing because if you understand the whole thing. Then your hatch rate will have to go up, and I don't care if you use an old styrofoam incubator because if everything else is correct, it really doesn't matter. I think that I could hatch quail in my mailbox in August and one of these days, I may try it. No. You don't think so? Okay. So you probably could in Tennessee. Yep. I would poach'em in Alabama. But so in, in the incubation masterclass, some of the research that we did involved buying a stupid amount of incubators, but, people tend to do that for science. We talk about ways that you can have a decent hatch with a$25 incubator. And we talk about ways that you can have a good hatch with a$2,500 incubator.'Cause we know that like we designed the class for everybody. For somebody that don't know Jack, we want you to be successful and there are ways that you can do a$25 incubator. Still get a decent hatch. There's tricks that you can use to make it work. So yeah. All righty. Check it out. I got nothing else on this subject today. That's it. We're done talking about egg selection. Maybe next time we can talk about what laid the egg. Maybe we could answer the question. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?