It occurred to me.. crazy egg idea

[yellowherb]

Updates on shipped eggs Experiment #4

Wrapped eggs, 5 were sent.
1 looks like a early blood ring, but it's not as heavy as a normal blood ring so I've left it for a few days to make sure it's not just a late bloomer.
The wonkiest egg has good, even vessel development. I thought it would not even try to develop.
The iffy egg is a blue egg, small/med size.

Unwrapped eggs, 6 were sent.
1 looks like a early blood ring. This one I'm more sure is a early death unlike the wrapped egg. I'm still going to leave it a few more days just to be positive.
The iffy egg is a d'uccle egg. Small/med sized.

@TJChickens 100% fertile and 100% tried to develop Best shipped eggs I've ever had really. No clears. No failure to even start. Both of the large polish eggs look great. Really beautiful development and even vessels.

 

[yellowherb]

@tantor Offered to help with the experiment and sent me some beautiful gigantic eggs. Thank you tantor!!

They are jumbo brown eggs and have pretty good air cells. Packing was great and even though I was not home yesterday when the post office tried to deliver (who knew post offices could be that fast), I picked them up today and expected bad things. Surprise, the eggs are in great shape!



I could not find the air cell on the big dark brown non wrapped egg. Other air cells are a little better than you would expect on shipped eggs. No badly detached AC, no obvious wonky, just a little zig zaggy around the edges. So better than your average condition of shipped eggs. tantor wrapped 4 of the eggs in ziplocs and used bread ties to close the bags around the eggs. The other 4 non wrapped eggs were wrapped in a waxy type brown paper??

The air cells are pretty evenly sized on all the eggs with a wrapped pale brown egg being what looks like the smallest air cell, it's also one of the smaller eggs. When I say small egg, it's a xlarge These eggs are giants. My tray is meant to be able to hold turkey eggs and two of these eggs are a snug fit!

So tomorrow I'll put these in the incubator after they have had 24hours to rest from their trip.

We will have 2 sets of eggs now to compare shipping effects on wrapped and control (unwrapped) eggs.

Thanks again tantor for the eggs! I'll keep you guys updated with progress.

 

[chicken curious]

I LOVE eggsperiments!

 

[yellowherb]

Experiment 4 Shipped eggs from TJChickens and tantor.

TJChickens Lost 1 egg. It was a not wrapped egg. Mid death. Fertility was 100%
tantors lost 1 egg. It was also a not wrapped egg. Blood ring. Fertility was 100%

*I had a incubator malfunction. Hubby says the control (board?) was shot and the bator dropped to 84F for I don't know how long before it was noticed. It could have been only 1 day or it could have been up to 3 days. I do see movement in the embryo's that are left after pulling the 2 dead eggs.

I'm using a 48egg Chinese incubator which has had multiple issues before, hence why I do not normally use it. It had parts replaced by hubby to try to make it a better, more reliable incubator.

So the test was pretty much shot after the incubator died. I can not reliably say those eggs died due to shipped causes or incubator chill causes. The air cells in both were pretty typical for shipped fertile eggs of their ages.

Truthfully I am astounded at the rates so far on both sets of eggs. I've never had 100% of ANY shipped eggs try to develop. TJChickens eggs are at 2 weeks right now and there are some really dodgy air cells. I plan on doing a upright hatch when I lock down on the eggs, it seems to have better hatchability on shipped eggs with damaged air cells to hatch them upright rather than lay them down as normal. Fingers crossed my cheap bator continues to chug along until my good one is rebuilt.

 

[yellowherb]

Experiment #3 was the sanitized and unsanitized eggs aged for 12 days..

I had 3 total make it to lockdown and externally or internally pip. THEN the incubator and hatcher malfunctioned. While the bator dropped to 84f the hatcher soared to 118f, cooking the chicks before they could hatch.

So I lost experiment 3 hatch results but from what I could tell they would have hatched. The non sanitized eggs had 2 go into lockdown. Sanitized only had 1.

Experiment 3 was FAIL.

Lesson learned, eggs can stay wrapped for 12 days if they are not poopy eggs or excessively dirty. Proven

The more dirt and poo on the eggs, the more likely wrapping and or sanitizing attempt will push the bacteria into eggs.
Sanitizing is probably not a good thing for eggs after all.

Allow eggs to reach room temperature, wrap and store for highest viability if you are not setting your eggs right away.

 

[duluthralphie]

Experiment #3 was the sanitized and unsanitized eggs aged for 12 days..

I had 3 total make it to lockdown and externally or internally pip. THEN the incubator and hatcher malfunctioned. While the bator dropped to 84f the hatcher soared to 118f, cooking the chicks before they could hatch.

So I lost experiment 3 hatch results but from what I could tell they would have hatched. The non sanitized eggs had 2 go into lockdown. Sanitized only had 1.

Experiment 3 was FAIL.

Lesson learned, eggs can stay wrapped for 12 days if they are not poopy eggs or excessively dirty. Proven

The more dirt and poo on the eggs, the more likely wrapping and or sanitizing attempt will push the bacteria into eggs.
Sanitizing is probably not a good thing for eggs after all.

Allow eggs to reach room temperature, wrap and store for highest viability if you are not setting your eggs right away.

I am going to disagree with you on the sanitizing. Keeping the eggs disinfected does not affect the hatching ability, I have done thousands to prove it to myself. I use to think it was bad, the USDA vet convinced me otherwise.

Also one egg with bacteria can infect the entire hatch and if you do staggered hatches several hatches until the incubator or hatcher is disinfected again.

I found my hatches actually went up when I disinfected and then never touch the egg shell with bare hands again. I wear latex gloves when ever I reach into my incubator or hatchers.

 

[yellowherb]

I am going to disagree with you on the sanitizing. Keeping the eggs disinfected does not affect the hatching ability, I have done thousands to prove it to myself. I use to think it was bad, the USDA vet convinced me otherwise.

Also one egg with bacteria can infect the entire hatch and if you do staggered hatches several hatches until the incubator or hatcher is disinfected again.

I found my hatches actually went up when I disinfected and then never touch the egg shell with bare hands again. I wear latex gloves when ever I reach into my incubator or hatchers.

I do staggered hatches and never disinfect eggs. Now dousing eggs in the amount of alcohol I used was probably very unhealthy for the eggs BUT the eggs that made it to near hatch were the cleanest of the eggs. I think trying to sanitize the eggs with poo on them kept them damp enough long enough for bacteria not killed by the alcohol to enter the eggs. The eggs were fertile and did develop for a while but then started dying off.

I would definitely disinfect again, not as heavily as I did. That experiment was really about how bad can dirty poo eggs get and still be viable. Maybe setting them right away and not allowing them so fester in bags would have changed the outcome.. But I did not do a non wrapped control for that and I should have.

There was another earlier experiment where the eggs were just lightly misted with alcohol and they were fine. So I'm sure the poo was a huge factor in the failure of experiment 3.

What do you use for disinfecting?

 

[duluthralphie]

I do staggered hatches and never disinfect eggs. Now dousing eggs in the amount of alcohol I used was probably very unhealthy for the eggs BUT the eggs that made it to near hatch were the cleanest of the eggs. I think trying to sanitize the eggs with poo on them kept them damp enough long enough for bacteria not killed by the alcohol to enter the eggs. The eggs were fertile and did develop for a while but then started dying off.

I would definitely disinfect again, not as heavily as I did. That experiment was really about how bad can dirty poo eggs get and still be viable. Maybe setting them right away and not allowing them so fester in bags would have changed the outcome.. But I did not do a non wrapped control for that and I should have.

There was another earlier experiment where the eggs were just lightly misted with alcohol and they were fine. So I'm sure the poo was a huge factor in the failure of experiment 3.

What do you use for disinfecting?

I use one ounce of bleach to 1 gallon of water. I double dip the eggs,
I have 2 containers of the mixture. I also have an on-demand water heater so I can adjust the temp, I set the temp to 125 degrees.

When the containers start to cool down I refill and remix the bleach,

I rinse the eggs in running water to get the Gunk off. I then dunk in the first container, then rub with a cloth if needed.

Then I rinse again, dip in the second mixture, this should be the cleaner one, then rinse again and set in the trays.

 

[yellowherb]

I use one ounce of bleach to 1 gallon of water. I double dip the eggs,
I have 2 containers of the mixture. I also have an on-demand water heater so I can adjust the temp, I set the temp to 125 degrees.

When the containers start to cool down I refill and remix the bleach,

I rinse the eggs in running water to get the Gunk off. I then dunk in the first container, then rub with a cloth if needed.

Then I rinse again, dip in the second mixture, this should be the cleaner one, then rinse again and set in the trays.

Thank you for your explanation on how you disinfect eggs.

Are you using warm or normal tap temperatures to rinse the gunk off? I'll definitely give this a go when I have laying aged chickens again. All youngsters right now.

 

[duluthralphie]

I set the temp of the water to 125.

When I was in NPIP schooling they told us to do it this way, Also they said the egg remains viable until the center hits 117 degrees.

For the few seconds the egg is in 125 degree water I doubt the center even warms a degree,

Some eggs are just too dirty and filthy to set, that is a fact of life. Those get cleaned harder and eaten.. I know sad, we eat something that I won't set.