It occurred to me.. crazy egg idea

[yellowherb]

So I was thinking about shipped eggs the other day and since I had just received some with detached aircells, it occurred to me that one of the reasons a air cell will detach is due to evaporation inside the egg. With a large air cell scrambling is more likely just due to the fact there is more room inside the egg for movement during shipping, hence why shipping freshest eggs possible is preferred

I'm currently trying to incubate and hatch some shipped seramas. And part of my thinking process is that shipping is very hard on serama eggs which many believe to be due to the size of the egg. I must admit that some of my eggs had more evaporation than others (this could be shell quality issue or age, idk.) The eggs with the most evaporation had the worst air cells.

So based on that experience, is there a reason we do not seal eggs in plastic baggies or try to add some moisture to packaging? It stands to reason, based on my crazy thought process anyway, that if you keep the egg moist it will evaporate less and be less likely to scramble or detach the air cells making hatch rates go higher.

Problems with this is that moisture breeds bacteria, eggs are not clean and would possibly move contaminates inside the egg with the egg sucking moisture from outside of itself so there would have to be a way of "sterilizing" the outside of the egg and not pushing contaminates inside the pores.

Would like to hear some other thoughts on this. Is there a reason a fertile, non incubated egg needs O2?

I'm thinking that I may try with a few of my eggs, putting them in sealed plastic bags and storing for 2 weeks then attempting a hatch. I'm getting 100% hr and fertility, so I know any issues will come down to my storage and age of the egg.
If the eggs rot while being stored, then I will come up with some ideas on how to sterilize the exterior of the egg without harming the egg. Maybe a alcohol spritz or something.

 

[eggbert420]

Sounds logical please let us know the results.

I received eggs last month that were scrambled. After reading your post I'm thinking this this was because they were packed in news paper. When my shoes are wet I put newspaper inside them to dry them out. Do you think the newspaper could have dried them out?

 

[yellowherb]

I don't know about the newspaper, but it couldn't have helped much to keep evaporation down. Most eggs are individually bubble wrapped and those eggs seem to travel well and have better hatch rates from my past experience. Some eggs I have had come wrapped in paper towel, then put in cartons or paper wrapped then bubble wrapped. To be honest at the time I had not considered this crazy idea, but I've had some real scrambles in the mail and it could have been ones wrapped in paper and put into paper egg cartons. It would make sense..

My girls have laid my some fresh eggs today and since my incubator is full I will plastic wrap a few in sandwich bags, label and date them then set aside.

It would be best to let the eggs reach room temperature before I bag them I think. I would not want them to sweat in any way. I also plan to wash my hands well and sanitize them before picking the eggs up and bringing in. Not exactly sterile, but not too germy either. I seriously doubt my girls behinds are sterile, but I will not use any eggs with poo or obvious dirt for my experiment. The girls lay in hay and tend to keep it pretty clean.

I'll keep this thread up to date with my experiments

 

[yellowherb]

I've wrapped 3 eggs. One is a bloody pullet egg and I want to see if the blood has any affect on if the egg goes bad or not.


Using the 2 fresh eggs on the bottom row and flip top sandwich bags. I put the egg in a corner and twist the bag.


Once I had the twist in the baggie I decided to do a double on it, so I took the excess baggie and pulled it back over the egg.

Then to seal it I put a rubber band on it.
Lastly I dated the eggs on the baggie. The wrinkles made this a challenge and doing it again I would possibly date the pointy egg end so as not to interfere with set dates which may be written on the top.


So my experiment begins with uncleaned eggs. 1 is a bloody pullet egg, 1 is a freshly laid egg with no visible air cell and the 3rd egg is one laid a day or two ago with a tiny air cell.

I think I will let these eggs age for a week and check them in the incubator to see if they develop normally if nothing happens to them in the meanwhile.

**IF they pass this test then I will ask for a guinea pig with hatching experience who doesn't mind a few Sultans. I would like to see how a wrapped egg does with shipping, if they scramble, don't scramble, how the hatch rate goes on them etc. I may need two test subjects for this in different areas. I think the further the egg travels the more likely to scramble or maybe it's just postal employees having a bad day.

 

[LLranch]

Wow I have come to the same conclusion not because of anything to do with shipped eggs but because of my hatching rate with both chicken and quail eggs. Over many years of incubating I have had hundred percent hatches on three separate occasions. I know that on each of those occasions the eggs were taken directly from the nest box to the incubator. Leading me to believe that freshness was the key. This year my peafowl are finally mature enough to breed. I have been contemplating how long to save the pea eggs before I put them in the incubator because I only have two hens. And then decided that I would store them in shrink wrap like Saran Wrap to avoid losing moisture while they wait to go in the incubator. wish you lots of luck with storing in the ziplocks we'll see how it goes.

 

[yellowherb]

Since I have a low number of hens (4 pure sultans and 1 mixed) I tend to set eggs when I get 6-12 eggs saved up. Only my youngest girls lay daily while the older ones may give me 3 a week. So saving enough to set for a full hatch can take me a few days if the girls are slacking.

I once saved eggs for about 2 weeks before setting them. I had a lot of fails in those. They did have some pretty large air cells by the end of the 2 week period on the oldest of the eggs. So this "experiment" of mine will be pretty interesting even to me. My incubator is home built and it's a darn good one which I would pit against any well known brand and I'd bet money mine wins, so I know my egg losses on old ones are not incubator related and assume it's just "old" eggs. But it seems the possibility of old eggs could also do with how much egg white has evaporated.

I'm not scientific, unless you mean the mad scientists sort of way, but since my incubator is full right now and I have the girls laying a lot, I thought this might be fun to try. And who knows, maybe it will be helpful!

I tried describing my idea to my husband, he didn't really get it. But in my mind if you fill a ball or bag or any sealed container with water but leave a air pocket you can slosh that puppy around really good. But if you completely fill the container or bag and leave no air you would not be able to slosh it around so much. So that's my working idea to stop shipping scramble and wonky air cells. The biggest issue I see is possible bacteria growth entering the egg if the egg is warm or moist inside the bag.

 

[LLranch]

I have two homemade incubators both have proven to be very reliable. I plan to do a staggered hatch using the larger incubator to incubate and the smaller as a Hatcher. Each batch of eggs will need three days in lockdown I'm going to allow two days for the hatch and one day to clean up the Hatcher. So I will be setting eggs every 6 days as soon as the peas start laying. I completely understand what you're saying about it being hard to shake up Liquid in a container that's completely full. Please keep us posted on your plastic wrapped eggs I'll be watching

 

[yellowherb]

I will update in a weeks time when I unwrap the eggs and start incubating.

 

[yellowherb]

Just a quick follow up.
I candled the eggs through their plastic wrap to check the air cells. They have not moved, no evaporation noticed. I did forget to put a non wrapped control egg in my experiment, so I added one today which is approximately 2-3 days old.

The bloody pullet egg also looks fine. Nothing funky happening to it other than the red of the blood is changing to rust color.

 

[LLranch]

thanks for the update