Dirty eggs

I know this get talked about a lot, but I am in don't wash camp. Now I have some eggs that come to me all the way from the maritimes and they are quite dirty. Dirty enough to concern me about affecting the porosity during incubation.
It is to dry and hard to wipe off so I am in a quandary about whether to wash them or not. Or maybe just wash the worst ones.
Any suggestions?
For those of you that do wash, do you get good hatches? These are already at risk because of the long shipping distance.

I only wash really dirty eggs and I haven't noticed a difference between washing and not.

I agree with Amy.

I had eggs this year from a breeding pen that were very dirty, I had to wash every egg out of that pen until the ground dried up. I never had any hatching issues at all. Of course it was mostly dirt on them and not manure. I washed in very warm water, running never soaking, seemed fine.

I washed some and they should be hatching in the next few days if they are going to hatch ? I don't bother to candle anymore , surprises are better

prairie dog wrote:I washed some and they should be hatching in the next few days if they are going to hatch ? I don't bother to candle anymore , surprises are better

Let us know how it went. We all want to know if washing hurts or helps or just plain doesn't make a difference. Thanks

Will do , I'm curious myself if it will work ?

I have heard that you can sand off really dirty spots. But, I've never tried it. Sometimes if it's just a spot I will scape it off, as best I can, then give it a little spot wash with really warm water and a clean rag (not the entire egg), and quickly dry it. I've never noticed any difference between washed and unwashed eggs.

So I ended up deciding not to wash, I used my fingernail to scrap off what I could, and a small pen knife for the really hard bits. I wiped them with a soft dry cloth and set them.
They still look pretty dirty but not as bad as at first. I have 38 eggs in two different incubators. I will let you know how they turn out.

Nothing dirty goes in my bator. I don't have enough hatches under my belt to say if there is a difference yet though...

Well the first four eggs that I set that were washed hatched three chicks , and it would have been four but one got stuck while I was gone and died in the egg .......so I guess four out of four so far ?? I have some more that I candled and they looked great ,they will hatch at the end of this week with the turkey eggs ....hopefully !So it would seem that it works? I'll still only clean the dirty ones , but interesting to say the least