posted 4 hours ago
As always, 'it depends'.
1. How long refrigerated is important. I have a friend who did hatch out eggs that had been refrigerated, and certainly had some success, but they would have been short term as in day to days, not weeks of cold. After all, normally, a chicken/duck/goose, lays an egg in the nest, wanders off to do bird things, comes back and lays another egg, repeat until nest has enough eggs that she decides to set. So if it's cold like this spring, those eggs would have been close to or in the territory of fridge temps for periods. However, mom would have warmed them up while sitting to lay the next egg. So it's just not a simple parallel.
2. Do these people "wash" their eggs. In my area, the Health department has rules, and we wash them just under running warm water. This removes the bloom, so I certainly wouldn't put eggs like that under a chicken, but in an incubator the bloom possibly be less critical.
3. Are you willing to invest the electricity and time to do this? Are you willing to invest in the infrastructure to hatch and then raise babies? The eggs themselves are the relatively cheap (cheep?) part of the equation.