Who washes their eggs before incubating?

[_Randall_]

How many of you wash poop off of your eggs (in warm water with a dab of bleach.....or such) before setting? If you do wash with successful hatches, what's your process? I'm finding a fairly even split on opinions!

 

[clayb226]

I cleaned my eggs last time with warm water only, 11 out of 24 rotted. Out of the 13, 7 hatched, 6 were fully developed and dead in egg. This time, I did not wash the eggs, but these were bought from someone on this site.

 

[BawGock]

I don't

Carolyn

 

[pdsavage]

I only wash if they are realy realy bad (whole thing covered in mud) and then with a damp cloth and water only.Since broody hens don't clean their eggs I figure a little dirt isnt so bad.I would never clean a hatching egg with bleach.

 

[chrystalduck]

I always run water over my eggs and wipe clean with a paper towel, then dry. My last hatch of ducks I ended up with 21 ducklings out of 27 eggs. My last chicken hatch I started with 12 eggs and ended up with 5, 4 of the eggs weren't fertile, and I had an 8 hr power outage. All in all I thought it was pretty good.

 

[_Randall_]

Well, it seem the opinions still remain split, with some washing and some removing poop from the really nasty ones with a fine sandpaper, or Scotch-Brite type scrubbing pads (the stuff that's used to remove sticky foods from dishes). The confusing part is, both seem to have good and not so good hatches when tried. Odd!!

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I wash and sanitize my all of my hatching eggs.

 

[La Mike]

I will wipe off duck eggs when they are bad but washing chicken eggs I have tried and got about 50/50 hatch. I have washed gamebird eggs with about 25% hatch. So I dont wash any but will wipe them off as collected

 

[_Randall_]

A.T. Hagan :

I wash and sanitize my all of my hatching eggs.

Do you mind telling what process you use?​

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

delete