What are we doing to the eggs, again?

This has been the question of the last two weeks since my friend Ethel told me, amid snorts of laughter, that my kids told her we were going to "fertilize the eggs, but Mom needs you to do it!".

INCUBATE.

Not fertilize.

So we started the project today. I marked the eggs with X's, and the newest ones, from the past two days, I put dates on because I fear our sucess with the ones we saved prior to that may be limited due to length of time at room temperature. Fortunately, Ethel also promised a dozen or so eggs from her own flock to up my chances of success.

See, ever since the great "Baby Chicken Scrambling Incident" of two weeks ago, I've been after Ethel to get her incubator out of deep storage so we could start our big science project of hatching some eggs out of our backyard herd. My kids have not been OK with eating chicken eggs since they found out where baby chickens come from. They've been convinced that every egg we've cracked open is nothing short of murder. Things only got worse when, after several months of telling them we'd hatch some out in the spring, we started saving eggs for the hatch-fest:

Me: "What's wrong with B?"
Dad: "I dunno, he's crying about some chicken egg or something"
Me: "That AGAIN?!"
Dad: *shrug*

Me: "B, what are you upset about?"
B: "Daddy broke the baby chicken egg!"
Me: "No, daddy just used some eggs out of the fridge!"
B: "Nu-uh!"

I go grab the blue carton off the counter, sure enough, it's the carton that's supposed to be on top of the baker's rack.

Me: "Dad, you need to listen to your kids once in a while"
Dad: "I did! But they're weird about the chicken eggs!"
Me: "Well, you better hope you don't get sick. Those eggs you put in your omlette have been stored at room temp for at least a few days."
Dad: "Oh, *those* eggs? You didn't just leave them out of the fridge?"

I seriously doubt my kids will ever eat eggs. Unless they are disguised as cake, or cookies.

But anyhow. I have almost two dozen eggs in a styrofoam box on my dresser. I'm afraid the pressure might be to much, I may crack. You see, the kids are expecting a 100% hatch rate out of the deal, the brochure says 70% hatch rate is considered a successful hatch, and I'm afraid we'll be holding funerals for every egg that doesn't live up to it's potential. So does anyone know? Tell me now, when baby chicken eggs don't hatch, does that mean they get to go live with Heavenly Father? Help.me.now. You would think chickens would be sturdier pets than say, goldfish. But I'm here to tell you: Not so much.