It occurred to me.. crazy egg idea

[yellowherb]

Experiment #4. Shipped eggs.

@TJChickens was kind enough to help with this experiment by sending me an assortment of eggs in various sizes and breeds, trying to match both the experimental and control group. Some were wrapped and some were not, allowing a control group.
These eggs had a journey of across the country going from CA to FL. They arrived within 3 days.

I've marked the air cells I could find. 2 I could not find the air cells (thanks to hubby @gpop1 for leaving flashlights on when not in use).

I was surprised at the air cells. Ok, I admit I thought this whole idea of wrapping would really work and it was a brilliant idea. But the eggs say it's not any different. The wonkiest air cell I could find was on a WRAPPED egg All in all though, the air cells on these eggs are probably better than any I have ever received shipped. TJChickens does a excellent packing job. The air cells on both the wrapped and the unwrapped control group are very similar in size. I expected to see a difference that was more noticeable.

So now the journey for these eggs continue. They will sit for 24hours and the be incubated to see if there is any difference in the hatch rates of wrapped (eggs labeled W) and unwrapped (eggs labeled N)

Wonkiest AC is lower right corner

Thank you TJChickens for helping the experiment continue!

 

[duluthralphie]

Following...

 

[yellowherb]

Following...

I have been obsessed with your Toads! They are just too awesome.

 

[duluthralphie]

I have been obsessed with your Toads! They are just too awesome.

Thanks, and if you need help on the experiments I am willing to help. I would like to see how to get maximum hatch rate out of shipped eggs.

Once we hand them off to the post office so much is beyond our control.

 

[TJChickens]

Experiment #4. Shipped eggs.

@TJChickens was kind enough to help with this experiment by sending me an assortment of eggs in various sizes and breeds, trying to match both the experimental and control group. Some were wrapped and some were not, allowing a control group.
These eggs had a journey of across the country going from CA to FL. They arrived within 3 days.

I've marked the air cells I could find. 2 I could not find the air cells (thanks to hubby @gpop1 for leaving flashlights on when not in use).

I was surprised at the air cells. Ok, I admit I thought this whole idea of wrapping would really work and it was a brilliant idea. But the eggs say it's not any different. The wonkiest air cell I could find was on a WRAPPED egg All in all though, the air cells on these eggs are probably better than any I have ever received shipped. TJChickens does a excellent packing job. The air cells on both the wrapped and the unwrapped control group are very similar in size. I expected to see a difference that was more noticeable.

So now the journey for these eggs continue. They will sit for 24hours and the be incubated to see if there is any difference in the hatch rates of wrapped (eggs labeled W) and unwrapped (eggs labeled N)

Wonkiest AC is lower right corner

Thank you TJChickens for helping the experiment continue!

Hmmmm...interesting that the air cells are huge compared to how they looked when I packed them. Jiggling does play an obvious role. The air cells were about the diameter of a pencil eraser when I shipped. I ship tons of eggs and I find that distance does not matter since they are on a plane for the majority of the time. I have had the most trouble with eggs going just a few hours away because they are on a truck or getting bounced from truck to truck the entire time.

Perhaps if the eggs had to sit longer allowing the unwrapped eggs to evaporate more, you would see more difference. We'll see how they incubate

 

[yellowherb]

Thanks, and if you need help on the experiments I am willing to help. I would like to see how to get maximum hatch rate out of shipped eggs.

Once we hand them off to the post office so much is beyond our control.

I know your laying Toad numbers are a little limited, I've been keeping up with the Toad raising thread. While it may not help with shipping (working on that experiment now), keeping them wrapped up for up to 7 days did not really effect the viability of the eggs other than one did get a few tiny mold spots and I did not try to hatch that one. The other wrapped eggs hatched as well as if they were freshly laid and they have beautiful small air cells too. Completely wrapping the eggs in bubble wrap for shipping seems to have the highest success rate, at least for me out of random shipped eggs I've received since starting chickens. A lot of people sleeve the eggs thinking they need to breathe, but they do not for at least a week so far as my experimenting has shown.

The eggs I had wrapped longer were very dirty and I think I had issues with those just because they were so nasty and I heavily doused them in alcohol as a sanitizer. I did have a clean egg in each of #3A and B experiments and I need to pull out that experiment and check them, discard the ones likely to explode on me.

I started all of this just due to shipped eggs and their low hatch rates are. The idea is that by keeping the eggs from evaporating they would maintain a higher than 50% average hatch rate for shipped.

You can always do the 50% experiment on eggs you ship out, just ask for the recipients to report back if the wrapped eggs have a higher hatch rate than the ones that were not wrapped air tight. We will likely never remove the postal handling from shipping eggs, but we can control the evaporation keeping the eggs with smaller air cells to go wonky during shipping.

 

[yellowherb]

Hmmmm...interesting that the air cells are huge compared to how they looked when I packed them. Jiggling does play an obvious role. The air cells were about the diameter of a pencil eraser when I shipped. I ship tons of eggs and I find that distance does not matter since they are on a plane for the majority of the time. I have had the most trouble with eggs going just a few hours away because they are on a truck or getting bounced from truck to truck the entire time.

Perhaps if the eggs had to sit longer allowing the unwrapped eggs to evaporate more, you would see more difference. We'll see how they incubate

The air cells were far larger than I expected them to be. The smaller eggs have proportionately larger air cells. The polish eggs were a little surprising. I expected the larger egg to have more evaporation but the air cells are actually quite small for such large eggs. None of the air cells move much when the egg is tipped, so either your packing was awesome (and it was) or the postal workers were having a great day and decided not to play football with the package. I've had eggs before where half of the air cells is detached and none of your eggs is that way that I can see. There is very minor air cell movement when I tip the eggs sideways.

The eggs look that good that I would be surprised not to get a higher than average hatch out of them.

 

[duluthralphie]

I know your laying Toad numbers are a little limited, I've been keeping up with the Toad raising thread. While it may not help with shipping (working on that experiment now), keeping them wrapped up for up to 7 days did not really effect the viability of the eggs other than one did get a few tiny mold spots and I did not try to hatch that one. The other wrapped eggs hatched as well as if they were freshly laid and they have beautiful small air cells too. Completely wrapping the eggs in bubble wrap for shipping seems to have the highest success rate, at least for me out of random shipped eggs I've received since starting chickens. A lot of people sleeve the eggs thinking they need to breathe, but they do not for at least a week so far as my experimenting has shown.

The eggs I had wrapped longer were very dirty and I think I had issues with those just because they were so nasty and I heavily doused them in alcohol as a sanitizer. I did have a clean egg in each of #3A and B experiments and I need to pull out that experiment and check them, discard the ones likely to explode on me.

I started all of this just due to shipped eggs and their low hatch rates are. The idea is that by keeping the eggs from evaporating they would maintain a higher than 50% average hatch rate for shipped.

You can always do the 50% experiment on eggs you ship out, just ask for the recipients to report back if the wrapped eggs have a higher hatch rate than the ones that were not wrapped air tight. We will likely never remove the postal handling from shipping eggs, but we can control the evaporation keeping the eggs with smaller air cells to go wonky during shipping.

If I find some one willing to have me split between wrapped and unwrapped it would be interesting. The only problem I see is the small number of eggs and the randomness of a test group of 6 each.


Also, if I might ask why did you use hand sanitizer and not a normal disinfectant for eggs, (like bleach)? Was the hand sanitizer room temperature or hotter than the eggs?

 

[yellowherb]

If I find some one willing to have me split between wrapped and unwrapped it would be interesting. The only problem I see is the small number of eggs and the randomness of a test group of 6 each.


Also, if I might ask why did you use hand sanitizer and not a normal disinfectant for eggs, (like bleach)? Was the hand sanitizer room temperature or hotter than the eggs?

I used the hand sanitizer on myself. On my 2nd and 3rd experiments I used a 91% isopropyl alcohol spray on the eggs. I think that while it worked when used on experiment #2, it failed on the very dirty eggs from #3 either because they were very dirty poopy or I used way too much alcohol on them. Oxine would probably be a better disinfectant on eggs. I just used what I happen to have and figured with the advanced evaporation of that alcohol it would have less chance of entering or affecting the eggs. I was messing around with the idea of no air flow (wrapped eggs) would allow sweating, bacterial or fungal growth and was looking for a way to keep that from happening.

#4 Experiment with the shipped eggs from TJChickens has no type of sanitizer on them. Since I did not see mold or anything on the first eggs of experiment1 until day 7, and fresh shipped eggs should definitely not take 7 days from lay to being set(hopefully), we figured it probably was not necessary. The mold could have been my fault, I may not have allowed that egg to reach room temperature before wrapping therefore causing sweating which created the perfect opportunity for fungal, mold or bacterial growth on the shell. The egg appeared fine inside but because I had some shipped eggs incubating I did not want to loose I chose not to set that particular egg. I worry about a wrapped egg sweating between climates also, much like a refrigerated egg sweats sometimes when you set it on the counter.

I totally agree that a small number of eggs can give random results, but it can clue you into if the theory has any merit. If results are 50/50 then maybe it will not work or requires more testing, but if the results are higher wrapped eggs hatching then it's worth even more testing to prove the results are not random. It also can have some random outcomes due to over all packaging of the eggs. Some people like using egg cartons for shipped eggs, some do not. I'd love to get hold of more shipped eggs to test from other people who have different ways of wrapping and packaging just to see the variances.

I'm still happy with the outcome of learning the egg does not need to breath for at least a week and maybe longer. So we can happily wrap them completely in bubble wrap and not worry about it

 

[yellowherb]

Updates for #3A & 3B
Lets call this a FAIL

A was poopy eggs which were doused in 91% Alcohol and wrapped after drying. They aged for 12 days.
1 egg is left and it's the one which was cleanest.
Based on those results I would say that the Alcohol really did not have a lot to do with keeping the eggs from developing bacterial issues internally. In fact it may have contributed by "pushing" the poo bacteria into the eggs. That idea goes back to a earlier post in this thread where it was mentioned by someone that warm water is better than cold and cold will cause the egg to absorb. The alcohol and egg were both room temperature at around 73F.

Experiment B was poopy eggs not sanitized in any way. Wrapped and aged for 12 days.
2 eggs are left in this experiment. 1 is clean, 1 is dirty.
Just based on those results I would guess poo dirt probably isn't that terrible, it caused some mortality but remember these eggs were disgustingly covered in poo.
A result, which is nice to know, is that 12 days wrapped probably had no affect on the eggs.

Experiment #4? (I'll have to check that number cause I remember 4 as a water test and it was failed)
shipped eggs, 50% wrapped 50% unwrapped and all packaged as normal. Shipped to me from TJChickens.
Set in the incubator about 16hours after receiving. 3/30.


Incubator Info:
Homebuilt wine cooler incubator, peltier heat source. 2 hour turner which is a tilt type (see saw) also homebuilt.
Because I set multiple eggs over a period of time the humidity fluctuates between 30-50%, 50% as I get a lot of eggs close to hatching. I dry incubate.
There are 2 fans circulating the air. Temp is set at 99.5F.

Hatcher is also a home build from a wine cooler. Temps are set at 99.5 and has a couple of fans mounted to circulate air.
A bowl of water and gqf sponge is added which brings the humidity up to around 65-70%. This may fluctuate as chicks hatch (wet) and dry off, causing humidity to go a little higher.

So now we know my incubating and hatching parameters. I do not go nuts checking and making sure everything is perfect and stable during incubation or hatching. My setup has been running near non stop for almost 2 years and I've hatched hundreds of chicks. I also do not do a standard lock down. I mess with the eggs. It takes my hatcher less than 2 minutes to get back to temperature and humidity.

My husbands thread on building the incubator https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/976303/building-a-incubator-from-a-wine-cooler in case anyone is interested