Nope, never had them explode. I hear other fowl may have this issue, but I've never known anyone with exploding incubator quail eggs.
I was just wondering, because I'm both lazy and overly cautious. I don't candle my eggs. I figure it's less handling and because the eggs are spotted, not much to look at either.
With the new
Brinsea, it holds so many, so I’m lazy and don’t candle first. I never had an egg splode before this hatch, but 3 exploded last week and the smell was frickin terrible (but only when I opened the top, I didn’t notice until I went to lock down a different tray). I’m guessing those 3 had cracks from being out in freezing temps and since I didn’t candle all 130ish eggs that I set between both bators, I let it go unchecked and they popped. Explode is not really accurate though, there was no propelling of goo or anything, one cracked at the bottom, which is the top when looking down at the tray, like 3 chunks peeled open and goo leaked out the side and down and out the bottom of the tray. The other 2 broke at the top of the egg, (bottom when looking down at the bator) and leaked out the bottom of the tray. I cleaned up as best I could without disturbing the locked down eggs, it still smelled bad tho.
I thought for sure I would have to bleach it after this hatch. I have 3 trays that were in use, and I would have set 2 new trays, because I’ve been staggering the
brinsea. After the eggs that were locked down/hatching last week were done, I took the shelf liner out, I moved all the eggs to new trays, one tray at a time, Cloroxing each one. I put all the trays far back in the bator, pulled up the shelf liner and bleached the heck out of it, then washed it in dish soap to get rid of the bleach smell, hung it to dry. I then cloroxed the base under the trays, moving them forward to get both ends. I thoroughly cleaned the water troughs out. Once the shelf liner was dry I put paper towels under the shelf liner and put it back in. I didn’t add more eggs because I was afraid it would still smell. After about 5 hours I lifted the lid a bit to see if it still stank and it smelled like citrus dish soap. So I set 2 more trays (I did not candle, since I obviously didn’t learn my lesson lol) fingers crossed.
The moral is, candle your eggs, don’t try to incubate cracked eggs, and if they rupture it isnt really a big deal, 14 out of 17 remaining eggs hatched, one wasn’t fertile, 2 were late quitters. The chicks were all fine and healthy even though the bator was stinky, and it cleaned up more easily than expected, just space your incursions so it doesn’t get too cool for too long, and after clorox, wipe away with warm water so it doesn’t stink like bleach inside.
