prehatch

pre- +‎ hatch

prehatch (not comparable)

1. Before the hatching of an egg
   • 2008 June 14, Reuters, “Tyson Foods Sues U.S.D.A. Over Antibiotic Rules”, in New York Times‎:

     The controversy stems from the company’s use of antibiotics for prehatch vaccinations two to three days before its chicks are hatched.

• prehatched

prehatch (third-person singular simple present prehatches, present participle prehatching, simple past and past participle prehatched)

1. To undergo changes that lead to hatching, such as the rupture of internal membranes as the embryo begins to emerge from the blastoderm cuticle.
   • 1963, Edmund Stanislaw Broch, Ecology and Physiology of the Embryonated Egg of the Fairy Shrimp Chirocephalopsis Bundyi Forbes: With Reference to Factors Synchronizing the Life Cycle to the Temporary Pond, Page 132:

     Failure of these eggs to prehatch within 30 days at 7 C is not surprising since it took longer for prehatching to occur in nature under substantially lower temperatures than 7 C.

• heptarch