Bad eggs--what do you do?

Hey everyone. I see mentions every now and then of bad eggs, and it seems there's a lot of contradicting advice, or really just not much out there at all. I ran a search on various iterations of bad eggs/rotten eggs/etc on the BPnet forums, and read through about 10 pages of threads, and then through about 25 pages on the Breeding forums, and only found offhand references to this topic, so thought it might be a good idea to compile everything into one thread in case anyone needs to look it up.


So, how do you handle bad eggs? I'm going to assume that most people would simply dispose of an egg not attached to the other eggs, so this question is meant to focus more on eggs which are incubated in the 'pile' formation, not separated.


If you notice an egg that's clearly bad (no debating is it bad/is it not bad--bad odor or turning blue, let's assume this is definitely a rotten egg for the sake of simplicity!) that's attached to a pile of otherwise viable eggs, what do you do? Do you leave it there, and just keep an eye on it? Do you remove it--and if so, how? For those of you in the 'leave it' camp, does this typically not damage the attached eggs?



Let's say you've got a rotten egg that's very firmly attached in the center of a group. What now? Is removing it a possibility? Has anyone had luck trying to apply some kind of sealant to the eggs to keep it from spreading?
I'm curious to what kind of answers I'll see here. I've heard of applying a little bit of elmer's glue to a wet spot, and that doing so will help to dry it out or prevent the egg from dying. Anyone got any experience with this? (I've also heard the same with super glue, but that seems kind of harsh to use on an egg. Anyone ready to chime in?)


I've heard some people apply foot powder to eggs that look moldy. Is this effective? Is it harmful to hatchlings, if the mold is on a viable egg? Does it actually work? Is it mostly used on completely bad eggs?



What other tricks/tips do you have for dealing with the smellier side of incubating? :) I know a lot of you BP-Net-ers have a ton of great hands-on experience, and I'd love to see some of it!

I separate all my eggs as soon as they're laid. If one goes bad I toss it out the door.


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I think the OP wants to know if the egg wasn't able to be separated after lay. What would you do is a viable egg was attached to a rotten egg


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I just separate the ones that go bad in the "pile" and toss them.;)