Why no washing/disinfecting eggs?

[deerman]

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You make great points....when i was a kid , i set up dads old sears incubator...watched it liks a hawk temp. humdity, even turn those eggs by hand.....every thing by the book....dad rather let his gamehen set the eggs.....even my Dad was surprise my % of hatch was highter than any of his gamehens.......so yes we can improve on nature.

 

[CallyB57]

Oh my...heavens to mergatroid! This might sound like it has nothing to do with washing or not washing eggs, but here is the deal.
All my life I have heard scientists and experts spout of statistics, only to turn around a year later and say - well....new research shows blah blah blah, which of course if in direct contradiction to what they were declaring the previous year. Not too many years ago the perfect and nutritious egg was touted as a cholesterol-filled heart clogger. Now it is okay to eat an egg a day - heart okay.

Take Vitamin E - no don't take it.

C prevents colds - there is no evidence that C prevents colds.

Hormones are great for women and prevent osteoporosis and mustaches - OH MY - stop taking hormones as there is a link between hormones and breast cancer.

I'll say it again - heavens to mergatroid.

Either wash your eggs or don't wash them. I don't wash mine and a couple have fonky looking smudges on them, but one of the ones with a fonky looking smudge looks like it is rocking back and forth and I heard tap tap tapping from it. Also, I have free ranging banty hens and one of them dug a hole in the ground next to a fence that was slightly damp and had bits of pine straw in it. The eggs were absolutely filthy and they all hatched and followed the hen around everywhere. Hawks got some of them - now I have one little hen and 3 roosters left but they are healthy and feisty and quite beautiful.

The point is, no matter what anybody else says, including the experts, nothing is certain, absolutely NOTHING. (if you don't include taxes and death)

 

[PaulaJoAnne]

As soon as I get proof that all birds in the wild and all domesticated hens are washing their eggs in either hydrogen peroxide or hot soapy water prior to setting, I will continue my practice of leaving everything natural.
Of all the eggs we have hatched under hens, we have a 100% hatch rate of the viable eggs.

 

[Erica]

I'm not all that up on hatchery practices, but my understanding is that sanitising eggs is largely about preventing vertical transmission of diseases like mycoplasma. In fact sanitising eggs was the way mycoplasma was removed from commercial flocks (dipping in antibiotic solution). In any case salmonella is often found in the core of the egg where washing can't help.

I tend to think there's no need for sanitising if you're just reproducing stock or breeding backyard birds, unless you're actively trying to eradicate something like the above.

Good hatches come from well fed birds laying well shaped eggs with strong shells. I almost never see blood rings, and the best hatch I've had from posted eggs came from the furthest away (about 1000km) and were smeared all over. I set them anyway though I was concerned... Every one hatched on time.

I wouldn't bother washing, personally, but I doubt it does a huge amount of harm either. But it won't eliminate salmonella. Scrubbing under running water... Now that would probably reduce shell quality.

 

[rancher hicks]

So I'm here again.

According to Terry Beebe, Practical Poultry magazine and I quote. " Breeders develop their own methods, and learn how to 'tweak' the system based on the conditions in which they are operating and to a lesser extent, the breeds being hatched".

Now with that said, yes hens don't wash their eggs, but I have only had one hen have a 100% hatch and then she only had two eggs. So while they don't wash them they don't have 100% hatches either. At least not all the time.


Back to Terry,

" Always use the freshest eggs when setting them for incubation. As a rule, try to avoid setting any eggs that are more than 10 days old; the chances of successful hatches decreasess dramatically with eggs beyond this age. Also, always make sure that your selected eggs are stored at room temperature (about 35*C) and Never in the fridge. (here I will note that while at the ALBC Don Schrider stated that if eggs were inadvertantly put in the fridge to just use them anyhow) back to Terry, "They should be supported securely, with their pointy ends facing upwards in the egg tray or box. It's also good practice during this storage period, to tilt the eggs slightly from side to side at least twice a day. This will help prevent the yolk from sticking to the inside of the shell. When eggs are ready to be put into the incubator, give them one final check for damage, cracks and other faults. Make sure that all dirt is removed {gently using lukewarm water and an abrasive pad where necessary}, and a suitable disinfectant such as Barrier V! {heavily diluted} to guard against bacterial growth inside the incubator".

So in answer to the OPs'; question "Why no washing/ disinfecting eggs?"

I'm satisfied with my hatches, I don't see the need to. This is my method of incubating. IMO, there are a mariad of reasons to why eggs don't hatch and any one of them could be the reason. Sometimes my hens don't lay the "perfect" egg, so I take the chance they will hatch.

So IMO, whatever makes your boat float.

Rancher

 

[PaulaJoAnne]

I think there is a difference in using a hen versus an incubator as well.
One is a natural environment for eggs to hatch, while the other is a human contrived environment>

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Incubator size an down time has something to do with it too. If you have a small incubator that you use every now an then then its no big deal to put unwashed eggs in it an sterilize the incubator between hatches. But mine is large with eggs hatching every week so shutting it down an cleaning it means a 3 week gap in hatching, not to mention how much work it is to actually clean it. Its just easier to try to clean everything going in than to shutdown an clean out something I shouldn't have put in in the first place.

 

[BlacksheepCardigans]

I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean 35*C. Once you're over 20*C (70*F) the embryos start developing and you start getting deaths. "Room temperature" is only OK if your room is 65 or under. I think that's a lot more common in the UK than it is in the US during the summer! In the US, once your room temp goes over 65 - which for a lot of us is year-round and for almost everybody is during the summer - you're looking at a need to either store them in some cooler place or bite the bullet and put them in the fridge. All the wine fridges that people buy to make incubators might actually do better intact, as storage chillers.

His other advice - well, I know you love the magazine, but pointy-end-up is just plain wrong. And tilting versus turning (that is, where tilting equals one end staying in the same place and the other end moving, whereas in turning both ends move) has actually been studied and shown to fail. You can't use lukewarm water because that actually forces bacteria into the egg.

I do totally agree that you need to start with a really clean incubator, so he's got one.

I think that of course everybody needs to tweak any process. But I hate to have people using that as the answer to everything. When it comes to stuff like bacteria and eggs, it's not just one study - it's fifty or sixty or seventy studies, going back decades, rooms and rooms of people saying "Didn't work for me," "Me neither," "Nope, we tried it and it failed," "Yeah, we had the same result," and so me standing up and saying "Oh, those are just STUDIES, nobody can trust STUDIES," seems kind of counterproductive to me. Why either reinvent the wheel or throw myself off the cliff because I refuse to believe that wheels exist?

 

[debilorrah]

Not washing them PROTECTS the eggs from outside bacteria. Washing them ALLOWS more bateria to get in. Salmonella comes from inside the egg, not the shell.

 

[kathyinmo]

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I am researching this topic as well. I am finding it true, as Blacksheep says here:

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