How to clean dirty duck eggs

[Lovnlife]

Do you clean duck eggs with water and then disinfect? or just not set dirty duck eggs?

 

[dbcooper02]

You are likely to get a variety of responses to this question.
As for me, around here in the spring with the mud and all its nearly impossible to ever find a clean duck egg so they must be washed. I prefer to wash them as soon as I bring them in the house under hot running water scrubbing the mud off with my fingers if need be. I set them cross wise on top of an egg carton and let them air dry . I'm not concerned with "bloom" and I don't use any further disinfectant. These seem to incubate and hatch just fine for me.

 

[weaversfarm]

I just incubated duck eggs in July. I did have one that was pretty dirty and I did wash it before I put it in the incubator. It was the only one out of 25 eggs that I incubated and it didn't hatch out. I'm thinking it was because it was so dirty...the mud stained the egg and I scrubbed on it pretty hard, so I didn't hold much hope that it would hatch out anyways. It was my first attempt at hatching out duck eggs, so I was still pretty pleased that 24 of the 25 hatched out.

 

[Arielle]

I posed this question to a long time duck hatcher-- she said to go ahead and wash gently as the protective coating is thick on a duck egg. I didn't track it for hatch rate.