Incubator smells AWFUL!

[furbabymum]

So my chicks are hatching like crazy. The majority are done at this point. I have about 6 eggs left and I plan on leaving them in for a week just in case they're just a bit behind. Anyway, the incubator smells awful. I'm not sure how to fix this while there are eggs in it. All the hatching gunk and the baby chicken nasty is just awful. I almost puked this morning checking on them. There are about 8 chicks that hatched last night and are still super wet so I haven't removed them yet. I only remove chicks once they are mostly dry. I could be doing that wrong though. Anyway, I figure I can't clean it yet but surely this isn't just my problem is it? Do you have stinky incubators? There were 40 eggs in it btw. It's a big one. I do remove the shells after a chick has hatched. Still smells awful.

 

[LTygress]

The water test has failed me many times. Some chicks just don't move until they HAVE to. I have had several viable eggs that never moved in a water test.

I don't have a lockdown, so I've got hands on the egg through out the process. I candle to look for shadows above the air cell's line, indicating internal pip. I then set those closest to the outside of the group, so they have plenty of room. Once they start making external pips, I may have to rearrange a bit. Once a few have hatched, I recandle the eggs to see if any have not yet made the internal pip. If they haven't, they get set aside.

Once the hatching has slowed down, I candle for internal pips again. If any have failed to do it, I make a small hole in the egg at the highest point of the air cell. I only want to get into the air cell, not the inner membrane.

Using this hole, I check to see if there are blood vessels and/or an internal pip that I could not see with candling. If blood vessels are present, I use a piece of another egg shell to lightly cover the hole, and put it back. If there are no blood vessels, I poke the chick to get it to stir. If he doesn't, then he is dead. If he DOES, but all blood vessels are gone, I begin to assist in the hatch before he DOES suffocate and die.

 

[aoxa]

It could very likely be your water..

After using distilled water instead of tap, the smell did not happen. My first hatch stunk SO bad, and not a rotting smell.. It was just gross chick hatch smell. The tap water is hard, so minerals and all that.. Try distilled water or boil it before adding it next time and see if it makes a difference.

ETA: I see you had a rotting egg which is obvious why it stunk.. I've had a rotten egg a broody buried in the bedding that broke. It was something else, I'll tell you.

 

[Fancychooklady]

I put paper towel or coffee filter paper under the eggs at lockdown . It catches most of the ' goobly ' bits and makes it easier to remove. I had a rotten egg in my last batch it was easy to identify, it was greyish and sweating. I also had one explode under a hen, phew she never smelt the same, talk about Pepe Le pew.

 

[LTygress]

You can do all of the sterilization you want with the eggs, but it's still possible to get bacteria inside of it. The bacteria in your case PROBABLY entered the egg before you got it from the hen's nest and brought it in for hatching. It could have come from her body itself. It could have come from almost anything. And short of bleaching absolutely everything that the egg may come into contact with (including the hen's own vent), there's no way you can stop bacteria from touching the egg. It's impossible.

Think of this: When you go to the bathroom at a public place and wash your hands, then you touch the faucet to turn it off, you just picked up all kinds of bacteria from the faucet handle. If not there, how about the paper towel dispenser? How about the door itself when you go to leave that bathroom? Or maybe a shopping cart. And one of my favorites - the products in the store that you are there to buy. Some one had to touch them to put them on the shelf. Others may have touched it to look at it, and put it back on the shelf. The cashier still has to touch it too. And don't forget the people who buy things and return them (yes, even food items). For that you can add the person working the customer service desk, the person who bought the item, and the person who put it back on the shelf.

And any one of these people could have "forgotten" to wash their own hands after using the bathroom. By the time you leave the store, your hands are probably dirtier than they would be if you simply went in, used the restroom, didn't wash your hands, and went straight home. But we don't get sick most times, because our immune system "knows" the various germs out there, and deals with them on it's own.

The same thing applies to eggs. Something will touch something, that has touched something, and the egg only needs to come into contact with one non-sterile surface to pick up those bacteria. But just like we have immune systems, the egg has it's own system to ward against infections. Two membranes inside, plus the shell, plus the pH levels of the inside, not to mention a DEVELOPING immune system as the chick grows and develops.

A rotten egg "happens" when one of those defense systems does not work properly against the bacteria. It could be anything from a tiny hole in one of the membranes to a hairline crack in the shell, to the hen's body "wrapping" bad bacteria up inside the egg as it is created. So instead of keeping the bacteria OUT of the egg, it gets inside, and the bacteria is "incubated" just like an embryo would be. So they reproduce, grow, and develop quicker than they would at other temperatures, until the pressure is too much and the egg must explode.

The good news is, this does not happen very often at all in comparison to the number of eggs you can successfully incubate. In two years of straight incubation with only a one month break out of all of it, I've had only 3 rotten eggs. And the better news is, if you catch that smell when it first starts, the pressure usually hasn't built up anywhere near the point of exploding.

IF IT HAPPENS, not all eggs in the incubator will go bad. Actually, many of them won't, because they were obviously able to avoid the bacteria to begin with. But you need to clean the mess off of the other eggs with baby wipes, and clean up the mess in the incubator itself. Then candle the eggs every other day for about a week. Any that die, toss them immediately. If they all still show blood vessels and/or movement, keep them in until they hatch. Once they have all hatched and have been moved to the brooder, put the incubator in the dishwasher with a good bleach-based detergent, and make sure the dishwasher is set to a "high temperature wash" if it has that option (they all do it by default, but some have the option anyway so you can turn it OFF if you want).

 

[Ridgerunner]

Very carefully you need to check the eggs that have not hatched. Very carefully.

There will be a small after a hatch but nothing like you describe. What I suspect has happened is that one of the eggs has bacteria in it. It is now officially a rotten egg. As such it is dangerous. Please be careful. I’m really not trying to be funny.

When bacteria get inside an egg in an incubator it multiplies like crazy. The egg material is a perfect nutrient medium for bacteria to grow. The incubator temperature is the perfect temperature. Scientists often use eggs at incubator temperature to culture bacteria. When that bacteria grows, it produces gasses. They can build up inside the egg to the point it explodes. Sometimes liquid will ooze out of the egg, foul smelling liquid.

What you need to do is very carefully get that egg out of your house. Now! It could explode at any time. Do you want that thing to explode in your house and distribute that smell everywhere? I didn’t think so.

I’d probably rap that incubator with a towel or something to try to contain it if it does explode and carry the whole thing outside. Once outside you can identify which egg it is by sniffing them. Get rid of it. Burying it deep is probably the best option. If I were hauling your trash, I would not want that smell in the trash.

You can do with the other eggs as you will. In my experience they are not likely to hatch unless you put them in at different times. Or you can do the float test. That’s where you put an egg that has not pipped in a calm bowl of water. If the egg wriggles, something is alive in there. If it does not wriggle after a few seconds, nothing is alive in there. You can put any that wriggle back in the incubator if you wish, but I’d probably just ditch all the eggs and figure out how to clean and air out that incubator to get rid of that smell.

 

[furbabymum]

Very carefully you need to check the eggs that have not hatched. Very carefully.

There will be a small after a hatch but nothing like you describe. What I suspect has happened is that one of the eggs has bacteria in it. It is now officially a rotten egg. As such it is dangerous. Please be careful. I’m really not trying to be funny.

When bacteria get inside an egg in an incubator it multiplies like crazy. The egg material is a perfect nutrient medium for bacteria to grow. The incubator temperature is the perfect temperature. Scientists often use eggs at incubator temperature to culture bacteria. When that bacteria grows, it produces gasses. They can build up inside the egg to the point it explodes. Sometimes liquid will ooze out of the egg, foul smelling liquid.

What you need to do is very carefully get that egg out of your house. Now! It could explode at any time. Do you want that thing to explode in your house and distribute that smell everywhere? I didn’t think so.

I’d probably rap that incubator with a towel or something to try to contain it if it does explode and carry the whole thing outside. Once outside you can identify which egg it is by sniffing them. Get rid of it. Burying it deep is probably the best option. If I were hauling your trash, I would not want that smell in the trash.

You can do with the other eggs as you will. In my experience they are not likely to hatch unless you put them in at different times. Or you can do the float test. That’s where you put an egg that has not pipped in a calm bowl of water. If the egg wriggles, something is alive in there. If it does not wriggle after a few seconds, nothing is alive in there. You can put any that wriggle back in the incubator if you wish, but I’d probably just ditch all the eggs and figure out how to clean and air out that incubator to get rid of that smell.

Interesting. Thank you. Will be looking at the eggs that are left. I'll also try the wriggle test. THe eggs have been hatching these last 2 days so I figured I'd give a full 7 for all the eggs.

 

[gander007]

Very carefully you need to check the eggs that have not hatched. Very carefully.

There will be a small after a hatch but nothing like you describe. What I suspect has happened is that one of the eggs has bacteria in it. It is now officially a rotten egg. As such it is dangerous. Please be careful. I’m really not trying to be funny.

When bacteria get inside an egg in an incubator it multiplies like crazy. The egg material is a perfect nutrient medium for bacteria to grow. The incubator temperature is the perfect temperature. Scientists often use eggs at incubator temperature to culture bacteria. When that bacteria grows, it produces gasses. They can build up inside the egg to the point it explodes. Sometimes liquid will ooze out of the egg, foul smelling liquid.

What you need to do is very carefully get that egg out of your house. Now! It could explode at any time. Do you want that thing to explode in your house and distribute that smell everywhere? I didn’t think so.

I’d probably rap that incubator with a towel or something to try to contain it if it does explode and carry the whole thing outside. Once outside you can identify which egg it is by sniffing them. Get rid of it. Burying it deep is probably the best option. If I were hauling your trash, I would not want that smell in the trash.

You can do with the other eggs as you will. In my experience they are not likely to hatch unless you put them in at different times. Or you can do the float test. That’s where you put an egg that has not pipped in a calm bowl of water. If the egg wriggles, something is alive in there. If it does not wriggle after a few seconds, nothing is alive in there. You can put any that wriggle back in the incubator if you wish, but I’d probably just ditch all the eggs and figure out how to clean and air out that incubator to get rid of that smell.

A Big X 2 on that

 

[LTygress]

Although from what others have said, you do have a rotten egg in there. Exploding is sometimes just cracking and seeping, but no less horrible!

 

[furbabymum]

I did have some rotten eggs. 2 actually. So I might make a new post about it but I'm gonna ask it here too. How do you keep your incubator clean during hatching then? It was totally sterile until hatching. I have an auto turner so I wasn't touching the eggs except the 2 times I candled. I'd just add water every few days and leave it. When they started hatching there was stuff everywhere. I do have a big incubator. The Hovabator that fits 50 eggs. Had 40 in there as I said previously. I was taking the shells out after hatchign and removing the chicks as soon as I could but it still got super gross. So how do I prevent that in the future?