Why no washing/disinfecting eggs?

[rancher hicks]

Quote:
You are right of course but since this article is in a British mag. Practical Poultry I never caught it. 35C would be 95 F so that can't be right. I've read elsewhere 55F which would be 15C if my thermo on the wall is correct. The article does say 35C though. I have a copy and can e-mail it to anyone who wants it. Or I can fax it too.

I still say go with what works for you.

Rancher

 

[debilorrah]

I do wash the eggs that I sell if there is gunk on them. I have an egg eater and often there is yolk in the nesting box. I also have one large girl, and I wish I knew which one, that poops HUGE piles in the box. I need a box cam..... One would think it was a danged eagle in there.

 

[wilkey44]

I am removing so I dont get into any trouble

 

[PunkinPeep]

Quote:
This is a good point. It is also kind of why i don't necessarily apply hatchery methods to my own methods. Just the same way that my birds/eggs are exposed to more bad bacteria than a wandering flock in the woods/jungle - my back yard chickens in their little house, with a big yard and clean nest boxes, are not exposed to the same (or i imagine, even comparable) levels of bad bacteria and variables and possibilities for contamination that are expected/protected against in big hatchery operations.

The big chicken meat producing operations also clean the meat in bleach water because the FDA can't think of a better way to combat the horrifying unsanitary conditions in which the birds are processed. That doesn't mean that i'm going to do that at my house. I'm going to process my meat birds under clean conditions, so i don't have to bleach my meat before i can safely eat it.

My point is that the big operations are dealing with staggering variables, and while i can learn from their research, their methods aren't necessarily for me. Especially considering that many of us produce in our back yards because we don't like the methods used by the big operations.

In my very small home operation, i'm averaging about 92% hatch rates. Fifty percent is definitely not o.k. with me. I don't put filthy eggs in the 'bator, and i don't sanitize the eggs. A certain amount of good and bad bacteria helps to make our chickens stronger and more resistant to disease. I really think this starts in the egg. If one egg doesn't hatch because there was poop in the vicinity, i think i just made my flock stronger, not weaker.

As to the discussion about research studies giving results that are often reversed......
while i think that it pays to pay attention to research, i think we have to consider that the researchers are often looking at only one variable and often don't pay attention to a lot of other factors that would be common sense to most of us. There is value in "what works for me," because if the researchers say that "eggs are bad for you; they cause high blood pressure and high cholesterol," and i watch my father eat two fried eggs a day for the length of my life, and i find out that he has abnormally low blood pressure and low cholesterol, i can conclude that the researchers might not have considered all the variables. And i can do this without being a scientist or finding out what they missed, and i can still be correct. Because i saw that "what works for me" fully defied "the research."

 

[blefky]

Even the best research will have unaccounted for variables, and these may well influence results. It's also important to read any research with a rather critical eye before accepting the findings. Who conducted the research, how was the research conducted, what alliances/affiliations might the researchers have that may have "influenced" their findings. It takes time to read critically, and there's a lot of psuedo-research out there, so we need to approach information thoughtfully. In our hurried lives, it's easy to give a quick glance to this or that research, and simply accept it, but all research is not created equally.

 

[Muggsmagee]

There is nothing better than a good debate.

Sorry this is newsy...my brain goes on tangents. (This article pertains to eating eggs...but is fun to peruse. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/1977-11-01/Fresh-Eggs.aspx )

I am all for science, comparative studies, research, etc., etc. The key to this debate is we are not "quite" comparing apples to apples...even when we are discussing hatching chicken eggs.

The hatcheries have expensive, high quality equipment and MUST maintain a higher level of preventative care due to the astronomical amount of chicks they hatch daily, compared to Mom and Pop Smith who (like myself) have your run of the mill styrofoam incubators. If the hatchery did not disinfect and wash their eggs they could have some serious problems on their hands, and potentially kill hundreds of thousands of chicks through contamination (that is HUGE money!)...AND their massive incubators do not come apart readily to be sanitized. Anyone who has personally seen these hatcheries (or footage) knows the cramped environment in which their breeders are kept. The hatcheries have to abide by Federal regulations and deal within that structure because they breed on such a mass scale they can also breed diseases and the like on a mass scale! (There is the exception of small scale breeders...but they usually have higher end incubators, too. So let's strictly compare commercial to home hatching.)

I can only go from my personal experience...yes I have had bloodrings in my hatching eggs, and yes I refuse to wash my eggs. My understanding is you can not rule out every other possibility of termination and base the findings of a bloodring solely on bacteria permeating the unwashed/nondisinfected shell. There are just too many factors...the parents could be old, the egg could be old, the subpar quality of the incubator plays a huge role in incubation, yes it could be a bacterial thing, and yes it could be bad timing on the mating. (My ADD just kicked in...my doctor just told me about a study...over half of human pregnancies end in miscarraige in the first month and most times it goes undetected. Why can't something similar happen in the chicken egg?) The hatcheries have fancy gadgetry, bells and whistles, humidity control, or single stage incubation, self regulating temperatures....they tend to have better control over their environment vs the backyard breeder/hatcher. Their feeding, egg collection, sets for hatching are all down to a science. It has to be.

It can not be ignored that because chickens have become domesticated livestock, and through the last century given hormones, antibiotics, and lord knows what else along with over breeding, we have slowly weeded out their natural defenses to certain bacterias and diseases. I am finding a lot of backyard chicken owners are not medicating their chickens just to make their flock stronger and more resistant to the plethora of contaminants (in the form of diseases) they fall prey to. Chickens are susceptible to everything it seems. We have crow, barn swallow and sparrow issues here. Our flock could get something from a bird flying overhead and transmit disease to the egg through wild bird poo that falls in their runs. You never know.

For those of us that try to hatch with incubators, of course it is not the equivalent to the natural environment of a hen doing it herself, we try to simulate what the hen does naturally. That's risky in itself. I have 2 styrofoam incubators. They are a nightmare to work with. Regulating the temperature can be tricky, keeping the bator humid is tricky, rotating the eggs, not opening the hatch too many times, keeping the room free from drafts, there are so many variables of human mistakes that can take place when hatching at home. I've had one bator spike to 108 degrees, and the other drop to room temp of 72 degrees for no apparent reason. I lack the bells and whistles of an expensive model.

Blacksheep, you mentioned junglefowl don't live in a 4 x 4 box and can hatch their eggs in a bacteria free "virgin" earth. (Loosely quoted.) You can not possibly stand by that. The earth (in this case topsoil, forest litter and the like) is FILLED with bacteria, parasites, and scat/poo/fecal matter, etc. There is beneficial bacteria and there is harmful bacteria. Did you know birds in the wild poop where they are? Even if that means near or on their nest? Have you seen a wildbird nest before babies have been hatched? The nests can be littered with excrement. Not always, but can. The chicken waste and egg come from two different tubes in the chicken, but exit out the same vent. If a chicken can hatch a chick from an egg with a little poo/debris on it, so can we. The bloom is a protective barrier...that is a fact. Is it going to prevent every harmful thing from entering into the fertilized egg? Of course not.

If the hatcheries were working in an apples to apples environment such as ours, or at the very least a study was conducted in a conclusive, controlled way...same hatching eggs (1/2 washed and disinfected the other 1/2 left w/ bloom and smears), same equipment, same environment, etc. Then we could draw a better conclusion.

The point in all of this is... YES, you CAN wash/disinfect your eggs before you hatch. AND YES, you CAN forego washing off the bloom and take that egg from the nest box to the incubator. I take to hatching eggs in a less intrusive way...I don't need to tamper with my eggs. It just isn't necessary. I have had over 90% hatch rate with my own eggs this summer, and less than 10% with shipped eggs most recently. But I have to deal with my cheapo bators. We can't impose our views onto others as if they SHOULD or SHOULD NOT wash/disinfect their hatching eggs. It clearly works both ways. Everyone can find their preference. That's okay.

If I get the Brinsea 190 Cabinet incubator I want for Christmas...I'd be happy to test this all out! Sounds like a fun study.

 

[chkinut]

well well well! what i have to say to Muggsmagee is simply........

well said!!!!

 

[BlacksheepCardigans]

Muggsmagee -

The bacteria that kills the most embryos is e. coli. That's not naturally in the soil. It IS everywhere in a large or small farm.

Untracked dirt is actually pretty clean. Sure, there's bacteria in it, but not the bacteria we usually think of as "germs." Unless you happen to get some that recently got pooped on by a beaver or something, you can go out and eat a mouthful of dirt and you'll be fine. I would NOT recommend eating a mouthful of dirt from a typical chicken yard.

At the risk of attracting Resolution to the thread

, if you look at a wild nest (google it; there's lots of pics) it looks like a pheasant nest. Very clean, eggs are clean and unmarked. They're not smeared with poop or feathers the way so many unwashed chicken eggs are.

A wild hen has a nest that is clean and new, with no e. coli, and she only uses it once. The bloom on an egg is evolved to protect an egg under those conditions.

An egg laid in a spectacularly clean backyard coop is still at a disadvantage to the wild hen, because of the re-use of surfaces, e. coli, and the traffic of other chickens. An egg laid in what seems to be a typical backyard coop, at least based on the pictures in the hatching eggs for sale forum, is at a SPECTACULAR disadvantage to the wild hen, and - let's be honest - a bunch of them are going to be dirtier than a commercial laying flock too.

There are, I think, two separate issues here: 1) The notion that the interior of unwashed egg is sterile because of the bloom, no matter what conditions it's laid in - I've read this in some form or another several hundred times on this forum, and it's just totally untrue; and 2) The related conclusion that because the bloom is Magic Unicorn Tears, you should never wash a hatching egg.

If the bloom isn't very protective, and washing is at the very least a can't-hurt-might-help intervention, and is possibly a helps-a-lot intervention, then what's the objection to washing?

 

[kathyinmo]

Quote:
Joanna,
Some of your posts (other threads) I agree with, others I disagree with (respectfully, mind you). In this case, I very much agree. I do believe I shall give this method a try as I incubate this winter/spring.

Thanks for this thread. It has been interesting.

 

[Katy]

You certainly are spouting a lot of "facts". Other than you giving a couple of links about salmonella you haven't given any sources for what you're saying that I can see. I'm not sure if you've hatched any eggs since you're just getting back into chickens, but I have to say I don't agree with quite a bit of what you're saying. How about the links for all the "facts" you're posting?