Detecting rotten eggs

[ILuvsChicks]

When you take an egg out of the coop and put it in water and it floats it is rotten. I've also found if they sink but stand on their point they are not fresh. Might still be good enough to eat. I have found the yolks in those eggs will most times break when dropped into the skillet. I usually scramble them up for the dogs to eat.
I've done this for eggs I plan to eat.
What if I was to do the same with eggs I'm Incubating? If I heat the water to around 99.5 and drop them in what should I expect? Some of my eggs are so thick shelled and/or dark I can't tell anything by Candling. Would a good egg at all stages lay flat in the water? Or at some stage will a growing egg float or point up? Would any harm come to the growing chick if I did this?

 

[chooks4life]

When you take an egg out of the coop and put it in water and it floats it is rotten. I've also found if they sink but stand on their point they are not fresh. Might still be good enough to eat. I have found the yolks in those eggs will most times break when dropped into the skillet. I usually scramble them up for the dogs to eat.
I've done this for eggs I plan to eat.

What if I was to do the same with eggs I'm Incubating? If I heat the water to around 99.5 and drop them in what should I expect?

It varies. I wouldn't do that with fertile eggs I hoped to hatch, personally. You could kill them. You should expect rather low level development eggs to look/act just like good but infertile eggs, and the further along development they are, the more they act like rotten eggs. Almost-hatching eggs float.

Some of my eggs are so thick shelled and/or dark I can't tell anything by Candling. Would a good egg at all stages lay flat in the water? Or at some stage will a growing egg float or point up? Would any harm come to the growing chick if I did this?

Depending on the shell's health you can drown them. Some eggs are too porous and will only just survive brooding if absolutely nothing goes wrong. Other eggs are more resilient and can cope with being almost entirely covered with feces or mud and soaked and still live. If you're artificially incubating them I'd estimate they're weak, most artificially incubated eggs are. Part of it has to do with the common practice of washing them. Doing so can easily remove the natural antibacterial covering they possess and make them more permeable.

You're better off getting a good candling setup and using that, or just being patient and waiting to see which hatch. Good eggs take heat easily and hold it for a long time. Bad eggs reject heating and very quickly lose it. But that's talking about eggs with around a medium level of development, in the former case, and eggs around or past hatching date, in the latter case, generally speaking. After enough experience I can now tell a live egg from a dead one by holding it. But floating them is not recommendable.

Best wishes.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Just because the egg floats does not mean it is rotten. When the egg is first laid, it is pretty much filled with egg, but as it ages it loses moisture through the porous shell and an air cell forms. The behavior of an egg in water is not whether it is rotten or not, but how old the egg is. A fresh egg sinks and lays flat on the bottom. An egg a little bit older has enough of an air cell to cause the egg to stand on end. An older egg has an air cell big enough that it will float. It can still be perfectly good, just older.

As an egg ages and dries out a bit, the membrane will dry out enough that the egg is easier to peel when you boil it. A really fresh egg can be very hard to peel when boiled. The inside of the egg ages and the yolk is easier to break when you open it. This has nothing to do with the egg being rotten.

This float test does not tell you which eggs are rotten. A typical use for this test is if you find a hidden nest it will tell you which eggs are older and thus more suspicious.

The reason an egg goes rotten is that bacteria gets inside. When the hen lays an egg she puts a coating on it called “bloom”. That’s the stuff that makes the egg look wet when it is first laid. The purpose of this bloom is to help keep bacteria out. It’s not perfect but it works really well. When a hen hides a nest she can lay eggs for two weeks or more to get enough to hatch, then set on them for another three weeks with most never getting bacteria inside. Turkeys and ducks can go longer.

I would not do the float test on those eggs. It will not tell you which eggs are rotten, it will tell you which eggs are freshest so you are not really gaining anything if you know about when the eggs were laid. The risk is that you will wash off the bloom and allow bacteria inside.

To greatly reduce your risk of bacteria getting inside even without washing them, don’t set dirty eggs. A slight smear of poop or mud is not too bad, just watch out for the really messed up eggs. Even with the bloom intact, these can let bacteria inside. Another trick is to make sure your hands are clean when you handle the eggs. Dirty or especially oily fingers can infect the eggs.

When an egg does go rotten it is bad. It stinks and can ruin your entire hatch if it explodes, let alone stink up your house. Usually if an egg goes bad you can smell it before it causes a problem and gently remove it. A sniff of each egg is usually all it takes. If you take reasonable precautions; clean and sterilize your incubator after each hatch, don’s set dirty eggs, and wash your hands before you handle the eggs, a rotten egg is really rare. Still it is bad enough if it does happen you need to be aware of the possibility.

 

[ILuvsChicks]

So, Bad Idea. Reason I was asking is I came home (I'm on the road 5 days each week) and my wife had the incubator turned on and there were three newly hatched chicks. I asked her what was going on. She had never messed with the incubator. She said she had gone out to get some eggs. Had them setting on the table and heard one of them Chirping. So she put the whole batch in the incubator. I have no idea what stage any are at. We are at a point where we have to many chickens. Time to pluck a few. She has given dozens of eggs away. We have started to use two cups when we open eggs. We open one in one cup. If it looks good we open the next in the other cup. If it looks good but we want to open more eggs we dump the one in with the other. Then again open the next in the empty cup. This started after having to stop cooking and clean the skillet after opening a bad egg in it.

 

[chooks4life]

lol yeah, I do the '2-cups-method' too.

Normally I find Ridgerunner's posts to be spot-on or very similar to my own experiences, but in this case, my experiences with floating eggs has been that they are usually rotten or near hatching; but I live in a subtropical area and there are some very invasive bacterias etc here which can kill a good egg within an hour of simply touching it. Might have something to do with it. Normally my chooks lay very hardy and strong eggs, able to tolerate a heck of a lot of abuse and still hatch chicks.

Best wishes.