It occurred to me.. crazy egg idea

[ChickAsThieves]

This is very interesting! I will definitely be interested in seeing how your hatch turns out with these eggs!

 

[TJChickens]

Joining in here. This may also help with overly porous eggs....

 

[yellowherb]

@TJChickens continuing here from our discussion in the serama thread.
Quote: That's interesting about the hot and cold water.

For long term storage of the egg I totally agree with disinfecting it in some way. And it may even be a good idea with this little experiment I'm doing. Since my main reason for experimenting was for shipped eggs I reasoned that they are generally 1-3 days old when shipped and spend another 3 days in the mail. So I decided to stop the first experiment run at 1 week. I haven't simulated climate or movements, so I suspect at 1 week my eggs should be 100% viable.

I think climate and movements can play a part. The eggs will sweat a little moving between extreme weather conditions just based on temperature. Example is removing eggs from the fridge and sitting on the counter. They sweat.
(As a side note to this sweating issue and refrigeration, I have hatched neighbors eggs which were sitting high in their fridge and partially frozen. Strangely I hatched roughly 8 pullets and 1 roo from that, and the neighbor generally has a high percentage or roo chicks. Future sexing experiment? The eggs were not meant for hatching, but I tried anyway.)

I'm hoping to do a running experiment, trying different things and seeing what happens. My first experiment was au naturel, 2nd would be disinfecting if there was a issue. Since I don't generally get dirty eggs I may not have any problems with bacteria entering the eggs at all. If I did have a problem I was going to use 91% isopropyl alcohol in a sprayer and just mist the eggs. My thought is it will evaporate rapidly and not add or subtract much water content from the eggs and they can be wrapped in plastic quicker than waiting on a water based antibacterial to evaporate. I have well water and have considered any type of cleaner which I do not have to add my water to, otherwise I would need to buy some distilled water for mixing concentrates.. I do have a concentrate aviary cleaner on hand called Pet Focus. It's wonderful stuff. It's safe to spray around the birds so could be safe for eggs if I reconstitute with distilled water. It kills a LOT of baddies.

1st run all I did for disinfecting was for myself. I washed my hands and used hand sanitizer. Eggs were gathered and placed in my shirt, while not sterile was clean. This experiment is still running.

I may try a 2nd run today, using alcohol spray, letting it evaporate and then bagging. It would be good if I can get another of those dirty pullet eggs. I want to see if trying to clean the egg would make it worse or better.

Thank you for joining in! The more the merrier and more ideas to check and double check and explore etc

 

[yellowherb]

Experiment number 2. I think we will run this experiment for 2 weeks. If another hen lays today I'll include a wrapped but untreated egg in this group.

Gave the eggs a good spray with alcohol from the top and the bottom, allowed them to air dry (took 5 seconds) and bagged them without touching them with my fingers, turned the bag inside out to get the egg inside it. One egg is slightly bloody, the others are clean including the control egg.

The control is not bagged, just sprayed with alcohol. I might have come up with more ways to torture the eggs but the hens are slacking today.

 

[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?

This is what I'm talking about. These are the replacement eggs. Newspaper on top and bottom.

 

[yellowherb]

This is what I'm talking about. These are the replacement eggs. Newspaper on top and bottom.

Some people freak out and think eggs need to "breathe". So they think paper is best and that bubble wrap will keep the egg from breathing and kill it.

If you are buying shipped eggs you can always ask the seller before committing if they will wrap the egg completely in bubble wrap or any other way you want. I'm guilty of sending eggs in wood shavings, that was probably not a great idea for moisture. But in my defense I had completely wrapped them in bubble wrap, twice over and this idea had not occurred to me yet. We only know what we are taught about shipped eggs and how to or not to do it.

It's hard to say this works better than that and so forth, since you may get a disgruntled postal worker on one day and not another so two shipments on a day apart from the same person may arrive in completely different shapes.

 

[yellowherb]

Today is day 7. It proved the theory but it was not without fault.


Mold on one egg. Clearly visible through the plastic bag


Several spots on the egg. Only one egg had mold though. I would have expected them all to have it. But this is just what is visible. UNEXPECTEDLY, the bloody pullet egg is not the one with the issue.


You can see how small the air cell is in this egg that was wrapped. This is the bloody pullet egg.


While the control egg has a much larger air cell.


I'm not sure if it was my lighting or picture taking skills, but this egg looks off. This was wrapped and no mold visible on the shell. This is not the bloody pullet egg, this was a nice clean egg.

I'm not going to set the egg with visible mold. I have serama eggs in the incubator and they are much too valuable to me to potentially loose them to my experiments.

The control egg and other two that were wrapped eggs (bloody pullet and the "off" looking egg) have been put in the incubator. Let me point out for those following who might not completely understand this..I did unwrap the eggs prior to setting them in the incubator

If not for the serama eggs I would spray the egg with visible mold with my alcohol spritzer and set it too. Internally it looks as clear as the nice egg pictured above.

So while I do not class this experiment as a total failure or success, it has proven that wrapped eggs do not loose as much moisture. It also have proven that wrapped eggs need prior disinfecting as some of us have suspected. Since eggs should not be sitting in the post for 7 days, you could theoretically get away with this. I did not see the mold until today but I'll be honest and say I forgot to check the eggs yesterday.

Experiment 2 is already in progress using 91% alcohol to disinfect prior to wrapping.

 

[LLranch]

I had an idea for a next step in your experiment as it pertains to shipped eggs. Either you or family member or acquaintance that commutes for work could Carrie the eggs around and a car one wrapped in plastic and one wrapped say in newspaper newspaper pack them as if for shipping and then candle them and inspect for damage after a week or so

 

[Kiki]

following to see how this works out.
Good luck.

 

[yellowherb]

I had an idea for a next step in your experiment as it pertains to shipped eggs. Either you or family member or acquaintance that commutes for work could Carrie the eggs around and a car one wrapped in plastic and one wrapped say in newspaper newspaper pack them as if for shipping and then candle them and inspect for damage after a week or so

@LLranch That's a good idea. I was actually going to ship some to a volunteer. I'm not NPIP though.