Egg Washing?

[bks2100]

Hmmm, wasn't there a frozen rodent dealer that was sued several years ago for selling mice with salmonella? Who was that?

That was Arctic Mice.

OMG! So I guess everything we know about ball python eggs has come full circle? Is this business (his) really serious? He never mentioned anything about water temperatures in any way , shape , or form. Did I miss something? Very hard to believe his hatch rate is unchanged. First , clean the eggs off with clear water. Then soak the eggs in bleach solution. Thirdly wash the eggs in Bacquacil. Then rinse the eggs? Hey, what? What temperature is the water at these three or four stations. 10 minute soaking of the eggs in diluted, cold or unregulated water temps? IDK. Sounds borderline cruel to me but........ .... Not for me right now. More studies and research for me and most , I believe. Air dry????????????? At what temperature?????????????

He really didn't give a great guide how to do it on his video, but I'd imagine his building is like most big snake breeders where the room is temperature controlled so as long as that water sits for a little bit I'm sure it's right there at room temp. I'd worry more about the air drying since evaporation will drop their temp a little from ambient.

Edit: i can't comment too harsh or too much as i have zero breeding experience right now but those guys made the comment they have seen no changes/improvements/increase/drops in hatch numbers since they started egg washing, so why go through the trouble?

Did they say there's been no increase/improvements though? I watched the video but I wasn't paying 100% attention to it, I caught the part where he said it hasn't negatively affected hatch rates and that was it. I doubt this prevented any eggs from dying but I don't think he said that it had a net zero effect. I imagine there has to be some pro to it that they see for them to warrant the time and hassle of this, the question is what evidence they have that this does something and if it's statistically or scientifically sound.

They have been doing it or about a year with no negative effects................ Hope for more people to do this to better the hobby........


I would want to think that I would do more and longer research BEFORE putting my name on something like this and trying to push it on a community that has been doing "whatever" a lot longer than I have been there.
For anyone that wants to try something new, cool more power to them.
Personally I would not gamble my clutches and don't see a need either.

That first part was just so weird to me. They're still pretty vague about what it prevents/helps. They stated salmonella, but that's not really a risk that people have or deal with.

I am only in my first breeding season and I am still waiting for my first clutch, which should be layed around 03-18.

So all I can say is; If people have been doing it like the most have for years with good results and 1 person changes something with no massive change in outcome, why go through all the extra work?

If it works for him, great! Am I gonna try it?

No! or at least not till it is proven it really works.

I won't do it either but I love when people do stuff like this, because all of us are sitting here thinking it's a waste, but there are a lot of times that people ignore methods that work. Not that they don't have good reason not to do them themselves, but it helps to keep an open mind to there being a better way to do things. And you say why do anything if there's no massive change, it's not like this is a lot of work. If they released their clutch records and showed a reduction of eggs going bad during incubation by 5%, that'd be interesting. If they released their clutch records for the next 5 years and that trend was consistent, then I'd probably start doing this myself (especially on the exciting clutches). I could easily imagine an expensive clutch having one egg go bad, I'd be kicking myself if I could have done something that could increase the chance of every egg surviving.

i see this as kinda like the industrialization of breeding. just like with food processing - it's on scale, additives/preservatives, chemicals are added for a "better product" and to better shelf life (or in the case attempt to increase/stabilize hatch rate). we'll see over time who else adopts this method and who decides to stay organic.

Or maybe it's just something that is helpful to them. I've driven past their facility before and it's a lot of space, if that other person is right and they have a building for each species then that's a lot of rats and mice alongside of a bunch of other stuff. So in those cases maybe even a small chance of salmonella would be catastrophic for them. I doubt it's worth it but I'm keeping an open mind.