Susan Skylark
Songster
Besides freezing (and cracking) quail eggs I’m having a really hard time impeding development until I tried clean eggs. Not properly sanitized eggs but eggs that have been soaked and scrubbed in cool tap water. I’ve been playing with many incubation ‘thou shalt nots’ and have found eggs are pretty resilient, but ‘thou shalt not wash off the bloom’ appears to be written in stone right alongside ‘thy incubator shall be set at exactly 99.5F as determined by an external thermometer.’ I set six quail eggs, meticulously cleaned (yes, on purpose) and on day 5 I had 3 day 3ish embryos, one blood spot and 2 no development. I’m usually running 90 percent fertility or more. The incubator wasn’t cold so that didn’t slow development. But if I had bacterial infiltration I thought I’d see rotten eggs by then (warm, moist, nutrients). So I did a bit of scholarly research and discovered eggs are amazing little things that have a ton of defensive mechanisms that prevent or slow bacterial invasion. They don’t make it easy for the little buggers! The slowed or no development were consistent with the egg using its resources to fight off bacterial invasion, as was the sloshiness of the egg contents when candled compared to normal eggs. The yolks also appeared bicolored in several even when candled. Suspicious but not conclusive (and no I’m not going to incubate bacteria if I can help it, fresh out of petri plates!). Maybe I just had some dud eggs? I’ll try again with a dozen eggs today, two control, 3-4 each in 3 groups: scrubbed, soaked, both. I think soaking should soften the bloom as well as make the shell more permeable. The temp difference between the water and the egg is supposed to suck bacteria in. Scrubbing should remove the bloom and will introduce bacteria if using a room temp moist dish rag. Curious to see if I can replicate my results and which treatment is the biggest no no. Not taking to hatch!
