Egg setting and washing

[Gypsy07]

I read a big long thread all about washing versus not washing before I started my last staggered hatch. So I left some unwashed, rinsed some in hot water, and washed some in dilute bleach. I still have eight in lockdown so the 'experiment' isn't finished yet, but so far I haven't noticed any differences. I wondered whether washing/rinsing might affect the rates of moisture loss from the eggs, but I've kept records of each egg and I'm not seeing any differences there either.

I think whether you wash them or not, it's best to start with the cleanest eggs you can get, so if it's eggs from your own hens, keep the nest boxes extra clean and collect eggs two or three times a day.

 

[jerwanman]

Very cool please keep me up dated. Boy its 50/ 50 on the wash do not wash...

my new set day is like the 22, 23 ....

 

[chuckzoo]

I have read that dirty eggs are prone to exlpode in your bator, I wouldn't want that mess.

 

[jerwanman]

Up date from this post ... https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=5735997#p5735997

Please the upper link.. I would like to thank all that help... I started with." People say you should not wash eggs your getting ready for incubating... Can dirty eggs be washed under running water. To was or not to wash part two... After the incubating of 31 eggs .....21 hatched ...2 eggs removed when candlleing 1 was washed 1 was unwashed......4 deaths by being too weak but formed... 2 washed and 2 unwashed.. 4 quitters 2 washed 2 unwashed.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Interesting results. Just from the law of averages, I would have expected more divergence than that. One experiment is not a statistically relevent number, but those are interesting results.

I don't wash mine but I don't set dirty eggs either. I'm not sure how much difference washing makes as long as the eggs are clean to start with. And don't forget the incubator needs to be clean too. A dirty incubator can infect the eggs.

It is also my understanding that the hatcheries wash their eggs, but they wash them in a specific product using a specific method. I'm not sure what that specific product or procedure is. I'm pretty sure it is not pure water, bleach, or dishwashing liquid. I'm not sure but I think it might contain some type of oil in addition to the disinfectant. Washing will remove the bloom, but they start out with a very sanitized egg and incubator.

Brinsea sells a product to wash incubating eggs in. If you are really that concerned, I'd suggest getting a product that is specifically made for that purpose.

Your results don't show it, but I wonder if removing the bloom would affect how much moisture is lost through the shell, thus requiring a different humidity level during incubation. Just something to consider. If you change one variable, you may need to change another to compensate.

Something else to consider. If you turn them by hand or candle, every time you touch the egg you take a chance of contaminating it with bacteria. Just another variable where having the bloom on there may or may not make a difference.

Obviously broody hens do not wash their eggs, but I have seen a report where the oil from the feathers may help keep bacteria from growing. We can never exactly match what a hen does when we use an incubator. There are just too many variables. I will just keep setting unwashed but clean eggs in a sanitized incubator and try to muddle through.

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
The humidity thing was something I wondered about too. So when I experimented with rinsing and bleaching eggs in my last hatch, I weighed them and kept notes throughout the incubation. Weight loss ranged from 14% to 19% (a lot more than I was aiming for!) and there wasn't any noticeable difference between the unwashed and the washed eggs - they were fairly evenly spread out. The two eggs that lost the most were washed, but then the egg that lost the least was also washed. None of the eggs that lost more than 17% hatched - no surprise there though. Interestingly, I had marked one egg as being extremely porous and I had expected it to lose a lot more moisture than the others and probably not hatch, but it lost nearly the least amount, and it hatched out fine.

As for the handling and contaminating thing, I set the washed and the unwashed eggs in the one bator, and handled them all one after the other when candling. I did scrub my hands very carefully before touching them, but I could still have been transferring bacteria from one egg to another. I got a much better hatch rate with the bleached and washed ones than with the unwashed ones.

I'm going to keep experimenting, as I find it really interesting...

 

[Ridgerunner]

But what were the causes of hatching versus not hatching? Washing is to stop bacteria from contaminating them. Was the difference in hatch rate due to bacterial contamination or something else? It sorta sounds like washing actually reduced the evaporation rate, not increased it?

Like you say, it is interesting.

 

[Gypsy07]

Quote:
Washing didn't decrease or increase the evaporation rate in any way that I could tell from my notes and figures.

As to the rest of your queries, I really don't know. I had one big (extremely unscientific!) 'experiment' going on with too many variables to be able to pin anything down for definite. I was hatching eggs from just one hen, so some of them were over a fortnight old when they were set. I was doing staggered hatching all in the one bator, which got progressively dirtier with each batch of chicks, I was bleaching and rinsing some of the eggs, and the eggs were being exposed to extremes at each end of the humidity scale as I raised it for the hatching chicks and then lowered it right down afterwards to compensate.

The older eggs hatched really well, better in fact than the freshest ones. That was nothing to do with washing/not washing, as I made sure to rotate washing/rinsing/bleaching as I collected each egg, so each cleanliness group had a similar number of old versus fresh eggs.

The freshest eggs lost the biggest percentage of their weight, again not related to washing/not washing, as some were washed and some weren't. I wondered if storing the eggs for a while somehow toughens up the membrane, making it less permeable and less able to lose moisture? I got my most ideal moisture loss rates and my best hatch rates from eggs that were between 4 and 10 days old, irrespective of whether they had been washed or not. Of course, if I'd run with overall higher humidity, maybe those ones wouldn't have lost enough moisture and the chicks would have died, and then the other ones would have hatched out fine...

Of the fertile eggs that didn't hatch, I got one early quitter, two blood rings (one in an unwashed egg and one in a bleached egg), and a LOT of almost fully developed chicks dead in shell with no internal pip, looking like they died round about day 18. I could see no obvious signs of bacterial contamination but I don't know what signs to look for in a fully formed embryo... Anyway I put it down to a combination of dirty incubator and vast humidity fluctuations, which is of course a total guess! So you're right, I don't know if washing the eggs helped avoid bacterial contamination, or if it altered them in some other way I haven't yet realised.

I found the whole process of keeping notes and comparing results so interesting that I'd really love to do about a dozen different hatching experiments now, and try to have only ONE variable in each test hatch. Unfortunately, I can't afford to buy two or three identical bators and I don't have enough room for all the chicks that would start piling up under heatlamps and Ecoglows after just a few weeks worth of experiments. LOL!