How often do you ever find an egg that is dirty? I expect we get one out of every 100 or so. The birds don't poop in their nest boxes and the only way the bedding gets dirty is if they drag it in on their feet. I keep new bedding on the floor and find we only get dirty eggs when one is found on the floor occasionally.

Still am wondering why people wash eggs? I am serious -- would really like to know why?

Hi stoneunhenged and Roberta, I wash my dirty eggs by hand and haven't tried the egg basket washer but I'll be interested to hear how efficient it is.
Roberta we get dirty eggs quite often as it rains here a whole lot and they get the eggs muddy off thier feet ;-) , also occasionally someone breaks an egg in the box and then I end up washing the whole darn lot to get yolk off, don't your girls get muddy little feet sometimes?
xxx, Ruth

My ladies do use the bathroom in their nest boxes, hmm I wonder why?. well anyway I do wash my off under running water then dry them. Hubbie insists since they come from outside and then sit in the refridgerator. I guess he looks at it like washing vegetables outta the garden.

See you soon

CI

The only times we find poop in a nest box is when a hen isn't laying yet and sometimes sleeps in the box. We discourage that, of course. (As we also do when the cats like sleeping in the warm nest boxes on top of eggs!) It is weird that they don't mind pooping in their water and feed though.

I use lots of pine bedding to keep the floor and entry from getting muddy especially this time of the year. Last week when we had all the snow, the chickens were staying in more and I was adding a light layer of bedding every two or three days! The snow has now melted and they are so excited to get out and roam.

I don't care for the bucket/bubbler washers myself as it requires soaking the eggs in a water/sanitizer solution. If you're very conscious of following the sanitizer directions and changing the water as necessary they work OK, but it's a lot of bother in my opinion.

I much prefer simply handwashing under very warm running water (at least ten degrees hotter than the eggs) until they are clean. Once clean they go into a strainer basket so that water can run off. No eggs soaking in anything.

If I had more than a hundred birds I'd probably have to try to find an AquaMagic somewhere, but for fewer birds handwashing works for me.

.....Alan.

HI, I was reading your thread and in Ohio it is not legal to put your eggs in water to soak, so to speak. You want the water quite a bit hotter than the egg so the water doesn't go in through the shell but if anything pulls out from the inside of the shell. It is better as suggested to spray the eggs with straight hot water while they are in a strainer or something with holes so the water drains out and then scrub off whatever else you feel is necessary, but you are washing off the protective film the chicken put on to keep the egg from drying out.

Commercially you have to wash eggs. For your own use you don't have to wash and some people don't even refrigerate, depending on the number of eggs. If you use them as fast as you get them the recipes call for room temp eggs anyway.
It seems you all are doing the right things for your chickens and eggs. We do lock the hens out of the nest boxes after we collect the eggs in the evening so they can't go back and mess there.

We made a bubbler egg washer and it didn't work that well. Has anyone used one of these? www.thelittleeggscrubber.com