This is my first try at incubating eggs and I am using a homemade incubator that so far works well for me. Sometimes it will drop to 97 if the house gets cold and the highest it will spike is 102 which was rare(Only happened 5 times I think). I started off with 6 eggs from hens that family out of town owns. 2 of them turned out to be infertile. The 4 other eggs I candled a week or two ago and saw blood veins and signs of life. I candled them again a week later and it was still the same, but this week one of the eggs you could not see through it and it smelled bad so I tossed it. The following day another one started to ooze and smell bad so I tosses it also. Yesterday the same thing happened, so I was left with only 1 egg. Well, today the last egg blew up in my incubator and I now know what it smells like. Goodness that is a gross smell, it made me sick to my stomach. I would have just let the incubator air out but I still have a peafowl egg in there so I just cleaned it out best that I could. Are there any ways to get the smell out other then just letting it air out? And I am wondering if I did something to cause all the chicken eggs to go bad or is it just something that happens? I want to know if there is a way to prevent this from happening before I try again because it don't want to lose any more chicks. I am open to any help that I can get. Thank you.
What causes an egg to go bad is that bacteria get inside and multiply. That’s really pretty rare so yes, something was done wrong. When a hen lays an egg, she coats it with something called bloom. When she lays an egg it’s wet but it soon dries. That’s the bloom. The bloom helps slow down bacteria from getting inside that porous egg, yet lets the moisture come out. So it you wash the egg or scrape it, the bloom can come off and it’s a lot easier for bacteria to get inside. Bloom is not perfect but it does make a big difference. Something else that can help bacteria get inside is if the egg is dirty, especially if it has poop on it. So you need to incubate eggs that are not dirty. If the eggs get wet with dirty water, that can also cause a problem. Another possible problem would be a dirty incubator. You need to sterilize your incubator, especially cleaning it really well after a hatch. If you handle the eggs with dirty or oily hands, that can help bacteria get inside. I don’t know what happened but somehow bacteria got in those eggs. When I was a kid on a farm many decades ago, an egg blew up under a broody hen. That was outside in a hidden nest, not inside like yours, so I can partially imagine how bad that was. That’s a horrible smell.
Oh wow, I knew that when a egg is laid that it is wet, but I didn't know why. That is really cool, I learned something new, thank you for telling me about that. Amazing how little things like that can make a big difference if something goes right or wrong. So should you rinse the eggs off under running water to clean it off or would that remove the bloom? That might have been my problem... I will be sure to be more careful with what is one the egg and if it gets dirty. Wish I would have known this sooner... The incubator was clean, and I would always be sure to clean it after a hatch. That I knew. Wow, so many little things that add up. Amazing. Oh, poor hen. I know I wouldn't want the smell on me. And yes, it was very bad. The whole house was filled with the smell even though it stayed in the incubator, thank goodness! Thank you so very much for all your help!
