The Bacterial Contamination of Hatching Eggs and Methods for Its Control

THE problem of rotting of hatching eggs is one of great economic importance to hatcherymen throughout the country. While considerable work has been done on the spoilage of storage eggs, very little work has been done on the rotting of hatching eggs and a satisfactory method of preventing rots in the incubator is yet to be devised. REVIEW Lorenz et al. (1950) employed ethylene oxide as a fumigant for shell eggs and found that this practice afforded almost complete protection to previously infected eggs. They reported extreme limitations in the field application of this method. Miller and Crawford (1953) reported that washing, oiling, or a combination of washing and oiling did not retard the invasion of egg spoilage bacteria. Some of their data indicated that the combination resulted in a more rapid invasion. Feeney et al. (1954) and Funk et al. (1954) used similar processes in their work. They subjected …