Broody hen and "borrowed eggs"

[nbradford]

We are considering letting our broody hen sit on eggs from a nearby flock (not ours) to let her hatch some out and get it out of her system (we have no roo). Should we be concerned about transferring disease from one flock to another? Can we clean the eggs before we let her sit on them and if so with what?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I would not clean them as that would take the bloom off and make them more likely to get bacteria inside. Samdpaper and water will both take that bloom off. Getting clean eggs and hatching them yourself is probably the safest way to add outside blood to a flock. If they are NPIP certified, so much the better. Your risk is that the chicks that hatch will have a disease, not that dirty eggs will introduce diseases if you select pretty clean eggs. You don't want to incubate dirty eggs anyway.