Egg exploded in nest

[Auma]

I had an egg explode in the nest, by the time I found out the other chickens must have ate the rements of the egg, I only found bits of shell dried onto the other eggs. Do I need to wash the remaining eggs off (the gunk is dried on them) or does that remove the bloom leaving the eggs more susceptible to bacteria? And if I should wash them and my hen what do I use to clean them? I cleaned the box and put fresh straw down and my hen jumped right back on her nest and doesn't want to move. I also candled the remaining eggs and they all appear to be alive still and we're at day 13.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Okay. I've had this happen, and it's NOT the end of the world.

Sounds like you've done well to get the nest clean. Personally, I wouldn't wash the rest of the eggs. It does add some bacteria, but in a nest there's bacteria already. My experience is that the eggs are more resilient than you'd think.

I would NOT try washing the eggs. You'll disturb the chicks too much and probably push the bacteria further into the egg than just leaving it alone protected by the bloom.

So the best you can hope for is to tidy the nest and in a worse case scenario dab off a horribly soiled egg with a damp paper towel. But generally, just leave it alone. Let the hen do her job.

It does speak to the practice of candling the eggs and removing all clears or early deaths to prevent egg breakage of bad eggs, especially in hot summer days.

Good luck with the hatch. Chances are it will do little to reduce the hatchability or survivability of the chicks. That's my personal experience.

LofMc

 

[Auma]

I appreciate the feedback, I decided to leave the eggs as is and see what happens. I got the nest fully cleaned out and I'm hoping for the best. This is the first time I've had a broody hen and I'm new to candleing, I'd checked the eggs a few times and all looked good. The one that had exploded has a dark brown shell and happened to be as big as a duck egg so I'm guessing it was a double yolker, but I had some trouble seeing that one clearly. If I go this route again I think I'll exclude any giant eggs, but I'll still have to see how this hatch goes

 

[Kimmyh51]

I just had this happen, found a very rotten and smelly egg about 3-4 m from the nest and saw mummy duck near by, at night, and they don't normally leave their nest at night, and this duck definitely doesn't.

I checked the rest of the nest and found one more rotten egg, the rest close to hatching and yellow rotten egg yolk throughout the nest. The whole thing really, really stank.

So before reading this post, I decided I had to clean it up and have just washed the eggs in luke warm water, smeared one which was cracked but alive inside with iodine, and lightly sprayed the rest with vircon. The eggs were all basically near the point of internal pipping, if they survive, I think they will pip in the next 3-4 days, and hatch 1-3 days after.

The nest itself was also covered in reeking rotten egg so i just put a puppy pad over the whole thing and replaced the eggs on that. Mum got back on top - i hope she doesn't have rotten egg on her, I didn't notice any while she went berserk at me and I had to hold her down while refilling the nest to prevent her killing the babies by knocking the eggs about. (and didn't smell or see any yolk while fighting for my life lol )

Some of the eggs at first candle looked like eggs do when an embryo has grown them then died, ie the clear well defined veins start to look fuzzy. However ducklings were moving inside most and the veins etc do get fuzzier when candled close tl hatch in my experience . However I do wonder if they have already been subject to bacterial contamination that might be causing the fuzzier veins etc, when candling, despite moving ducklings inside.

Last year i had a duckling i found stuck inside a crushed egg in a rotten contaminated nest that survived (shes alive, robust and healthy now) and so are her two siblings and mum who also stank like polecats when they exited the nest.

And I had another in a different nest, which was hatching well and peeping, but the egg had been broken prior to hatch (from outside of shell right thru to the blood vessels around the hatching duckling) and had caused an injury to the egg which had bled then clotted, but smelt bad.
That duckling was initially, after its first peeps when it externally pipped (which was when I found it), robust, healthy and fine until, imo, the contaminated blood from the injury contaminated the unabsorbed yolk of the newly hatched duckling.
The egg had been knocked, or something had had a go at it and it had caused bleeding, but this had stopped some time prior to hatch and clotted, but left dead blood inside the egg. So the area where it had bled had become infected, but the infection had not gotten to the embryo, as i think the vessels/veins had since clotted and died off to prevent the bacteria making its way into the embryo.
However once the duckling had piped thru the internal membrane, it exposed itself to this smelly infected blood from this injury a week or so prior to hatch which I think contaminated the unabsorbed yolk, and as the hatch went on, and it absorbed that yolk, it became slower and became sick, and a few hours after hatching it died.

I tried to prevent this as i could see what was happening, but what can you do with a tiny hatching duckling to kill off obvious bacteria contaminated, old blood, inside the egg shell, that wont kill the hatching too? I gave it antibiotics as soon as its beak was out enough to syringe some antibiotic solution into it, and put iodine over the area of the unabsorbed yolk, but I think it was too little too late, and I just couldnt stop the exposure or treat it in such a tiny duckling.

In hindsight maybe if I encountered that again Id attempt to clamp off the yolk and prevent the yolk being absorbed, as it was the yolk being absorbed that I am sure introduced the bacteria (which had been inside the egg with this duckling for a few days to a week without the duckling getting sick), and it was after the duckling pipped and you could see this old smelly darker browny red blood around the yolk, that the duckling, which had been alert and pipping and hatching well and energetically, and normally till then, start to go downhill.

I am 100% certain that bacterial infection from the injury to that egg and subsequent bacterial contamination, is what killed that duckling.

So for that reason I decided to clean and lightly vircon the eggs (apparently poultry can ingest vircon in low concentrations in drinking water with no harm, and the amount i sprayed on the eggs was well, well under that concentration.

Although i did have a duckling who hatched into a stinking bacteria laden rotten egg nest last year who survived, along with her mother and the two other ducklings who hatched earlier and left the nest with mum (before I found the half dead duckling in a crushed egg stinking of rotten egg), I have had this in other nests and they have not survived so the survival rate in my own experience in a nest where a rotten egg has burst, is pretty low. In my experience, the ducklings who did hatch and not get sick, in a contaminated nest last year, were very much an exception to the rule.


So for those reasons I decided to wash, and try to disinfect the eggs, and place back in the nest with a puppy pad over the original nest to prevent eggs or mum contacting bacteria in the nest without completely removing and replacing nest material and posdibly scaring mum off the nest entirely.


Mummy duck is back on them now, and in the next few days I will know if any ducklings survived.

For this particular nest I did this as I feel it was the best chance I could give the ducklings. It was horrible last year watching this clearly healthy duckling get sick and die during soon after its hatch from contamination that I could see was there, but not stop getting to the duckling.


Even if none hatch, I still feel like this is the only chance they had as the nest was so badly contaminated.

Id never wash eggs otherwise, as i absolutely do not believe it is ever a good idea to remove the bloom. But for these eggs I feel like there was no option.
i will try and remember to update the outcome.