Can I clean they eggs?

Scrup with a dry scrubby, or leave. Nothing wet.


Lanae

 

I have also heard to use a soft sand paper.

 

99% of the chickens hatched in this country are done so by hatcheries. Those hatcheries wash their eggs and have extremely high percentage of success. Many posters here on BYC also state that washing actually increased their hatch rate. Go figure.

My "theory" is that a mother broody hen "washes" her eggs with her sweat. Just a different point of view.

 

I agree with some of the posts and if the eggs are really dirty I take a scrub pad and gently scrub most of the dirt/poop off, other wise if they aren't bad I put them in the incubator. I don't know if it really makes a difference but a broody can't clean her eggs.

http://www.suite101.com/content/do-birds-sweat-a15766

 

I washed the batch of quail eggs I did earlier this spring in Brinsea's egg wash/incubator disinfectant, in roughly 105 degree water, leaving them in the solution for about 2 minutes, removing, rinsing in warm water, and then putting them into a fresh batch of the solution and removing without rinsing per the instructions.

Had the best hatch ever.

I am now doing turkey and duck eggs from my own birds. I washed them in the same way, except used 110 degree water per Brinsea's recommendation (I lowered the temp on the quail egg water just because they're so small and I thought the might overheat faster). So far, 12 for 12 on the turkey eggs, duck eggs have only been in about 2 1/2 weeks but all are developing.

I plan to always wash my eggs from now on -- I think the removal of surface bacteria and just plain dirt more than makes up for the loss of the bloom layer.

 

Pure choice of word construction on my part. Of course, hens do not sweat. CMOM is correct.

However, their skin contains oils and the humidity of the air, coupled with moisture or condensation created through temperature differential can create conditions whereby the humidity is present, similar to the way windows in cars gather "sweat". As to whether this effectively "washes" the eggs is speculation on my part, thus the use of quotes around "theory". Mere conjecture on my part.