Who here sanitizes or cleans their eggs before setting in incubator

[Jmcggnj6]

I am just wondering if anyone here cleans or sanitizes their eggs before setting them for hatch? I ask this question because I've seen a few things on line where people have used a Listerine and water mixture or hydrogen peroxide to sanitize their eggs. Some even claim that the hydrogen peroxide increases their hatch rate. What do you guys think? Any experience with this? I have always been under the impression that cleaning the outside of the eggs was a no no.

 

[Spartan22]

I have no experience on washing the eggs before setting to hatch. It’s only my 5th hatching, I’d never wash the eggs and had almost 100% hatch rate so far, now if the egg is extremely soiled, I don’t set them, I wash them and it go to the refrigerator to be eaten.

 

[Ridgerunner]

About the last thing a hen does when she lays an egg is cover it with a liquid layer we call bloom. That's why an egg just laid looks wet, it is. But that quickly dries and forms a layer that helps keep bacteria out of the porous egg. If bacteria gets inside it has a perfect food and an incubated egg is a perfect temperature for bacteria to multiply. It goes very bad very quickly. The bloom is what enables a hen to hide a nest for two weeks, laying eggs, then sit on them for three weeks to hatch them without any going bad.

If you are going to put them under a broody hen there is no way I would consider cleaning the eggs, either with any type of wash or sandpapering stuff off. To me the risk is too great. Under a broody hen is not a sterile environment.

Commercial hatcheries wash the eggs before they put them in an incubator in something to sterilize them. But they also fumigate and sterilize the incubator and incubator room before they start. They are as careful to keep bacteria as far from the eggs as they can be. They do not handle the eggs with dirty hands or dirty equipment. They don't wear dirty clothing when around the eggs. Their sanitation methods would work in a hospital operating room.

My methods are not that sterile so I don't remove the bloom from any eggs I put in the incubator. I sterilize the incubator before I use it and my hands are clean before I handle eggs. I do not set dirty eggs to start with. I might lightly rub a very light bit of dirt off an egg with my thumb but if the dirt is at all thick I don't set it. If it has poop on it I don't set it.

I've never had an egg go bad in my incubator. I had eggs go bad once under a broody hen but an egg broke and smeared the other eggs with that goop. That allowed the bacteria to get trough the bloom.

Other than that broken egg time I've never had a problem with a rotten egg. That probably means I'm being more cautious than I have to be. But if you have ever smelled a rotten egg you'd understand you really don't want to take chances.

 

[WickedChicksNH]

I staggered eggs, my first one I cleaned up, (that one didn't make it looks like it stopped growing after about the second week, the one that just hatched I did a quick wipe off and she is all healthy and my third one I hatched I did nothing to and again all healthy.
So I really don't know myself.
I figured mama hens don't sanitize their eggs when they lay on them.

 

[CannedMonster]

About the last thing a hen does when she lays an egg is cover it with a liquid layer we call bloom. That's why an egg just laid looks wet, it is. But that quickly dries and forms a layer that helps keep bacteria out of the porous egg. If bacteria gets inside it has a perfect food and an incubated egg is a perfect temperature for bacteria to multiply. It goes very bad very quickly. The bloom is what enables a hen to hide a nest for two weeks, laying eggs, then sit on them for three weeks to hatch them without any going bad.

If you are going to put them under a broody hen there is no way I would consider cleaning the eggs, either with any type of wash or sandpapering stuff off. To me the risk is too great. Under a broody hen is not a sterile environment.

Commercial hatcheries wash the eggs before they put them in an incubator in something to sterilize them. But they also fumigate and sterilize the incubator and incubator room before they start. They are as careful to keep bacteria as far from the eggs as they can be. They do not handle the eggs with dirty hands or dirty equipment. They don't wear dirty clothing when around the eggs. Their sanitation methods would work in a hospital operating room.

My methods are not that sterile so I don't remove the bloom from any eggs I put in the incubator. I sterilize the incubator before I use it and my hands are clean before I handle eggs. I do not set dirty eggs to start with. I might lightly rub a very light bit of dirt off an egg with my thumb but if the dirt is at all thick I don't set it. If it has poop on it I don't set it.

I've never had an egg go bad in my incubator. I had eggs go bad once under a broody hen but an egg broke and smeared the other eggs with that goop. That allowed the bacteria to get trough the bloom.

Other than that broken egg time I've never had a problem with a rotten egg. That probably means I'm being more cautious than I have to be. But if you have ever smelled a rotten egg you'd understand you really don't want to take chances.

 

[Zinjifrah]

To my understanding, it was more of a study on Peroxide than an opinion -

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1906612

After reading this, and other sites, the batch of eggs that I have in now were sprayed down with peroxide at 3%, and allowed to dry, as part of their 'resting' process before they went in the incubator. I did not clean them, though, just sprayed them and let the peroxide dry on the shell.

They went in on the 1st. On the 6th, I opened the incubator to turn them for the first time that morning, and got hit in the face with a rancid odor. It was tracked to one egg, not leaking, but olfactorily bad. I had another sniffer in to confirm that, since I couldn't see anything wrong inside it, though I did notice that the shell had visibly paled. It went from creamy beige to grey-white. It did not smell like rotten egg, no sulfur smell at all. It smelled like rancid, decaying, putrid, rotting meat.

That egg was removed, and an examination showed albumen and yolk normal looking, but a drop or two worth of reddish-brown slime inside. All of which got flushed down the toilet. I'm assuming that was bacteria, and that it was inside the egg when it was laid, since that was actually a CLEAN egg out of a batch of very dirty ones.

Of the rest, though it's too early to be really certain, out of the remaining 21 eggs:

13 show signs of development
1 shows signs of development, but also what could be a blood ring. I'm puzzled by the combination - possible blood ring and possible veins.
7 were completely clear at last check. One of those seven has a crack at the narrow end, which I covered with scotch tape.

Original count was 22 eggs which I received via the mail, purchased from eBay.

I plan to candle again on the 11th, and remove any that continue to look clear. Since removing the rancid egg, there's been no foul odor at all. All of the eggs, regardless of having poop stains on them, smell like eggs and not poop. I never knew before my previous (1st) effort at incubating that raw intact eggs had a smell. It's not unpleasant! But now I will always think of it as 'egg'.

My first batch of eggs were 18, of which 11 showed some sign of development, 4 hatched. Technically, my progress is higher at this point, at 63% (rounded down) showing at least some indication of life, as opposed to 56% (rounded up) last time.

 

[lazy gardener]

I don't sanitize eggs before setting them. IF, I had some eggs that were not as clean as I'd like, and IF I was scrambling to preserve some genetic material that was important to me: for example, if I had heavy predator losses, and lost my rooster, and my favorite hen was killed, but I had some of her not so clean eggs... I might try sanitizing those eggs if it meant a difference between choosing to put them in the bator vs. not risking it. Sorry for the long winded response!

 

[Jmcggnj6]

Thank you I have never cleaned eggs I was going to incubate simply because of what I knew about the bloom, if they were dirty I just didn't set them. But then I watched several videos on YouTube of people doing this and just wondered if maybe I was missing something. I just had the worst hatch rate I have ever had (about 60%) and no idea what happened. They were clean eggs... 3 different breeds and my standard candy corn polish did not fair well at all. So I was just looking at tips and tricks...