Chicken Egg Washing Machine Review – the “Little Egg Scrubber”

This article is taken from Five Gallon Ideas, which features over 100 uses for 5 gallon buckets with more being added all the time.

At peak efficiency, our hens lay 95 eggs daily. Eggs must be washed for sale, so to save time we clean them in batches of 400 at a time every few days. It still takes over an hour to wash all those eggs (9.85 seconds per egg), so we’ve been hunting for an inexpensive egg washing machine for years.

We built two versions of the bubbler egg washer, but they often broke eggs and did not clean the eggs to sellable condition. And since it has to be used outside, the egg bubbler is not useful in winter.

Most of the tabletop egg washers we researched cost over $1000, or are cheap but do not offer significant time savings. Some are cheap and fast, but do not clean the eggs well.

Then a reader posted a link to his new product,The Little Egg Scrubber.  We asked if he would like us to test the unit, in exchange for writing this review. He agreed.

Our egg washer saw the egg scrubbing machine demo video and shook her head,  “That’s gonna be too slow,”  she said. “I have to place each egg–how will that be any faster?”

The egg washer arrived looking exactly like the photos. Included is an egg soak enzyme, a scrubber pad, and a green tray that acts as a reservoir for water to help in cleaning.

After a week of use, we found the enzymes and the scrubber to be unnecessary in cleaning the eggs to acceptable condition.

Our green tray reservoir was cracked during shipping. We let the company know and they sent us a new one immediately.

While the eggs soaked in the left-hand sink, we placed the Scrubber into the right-hand sink and plugged it in.  The motor waits a second, then starts right up, turning two roller brushes towards each other.

Here is a demo video of us using the egg washer to wash our first test batch of 25 eggs.

Our egg scrubber placed three eggs into the brush pockets and switched the machine on by plugging it into the wall. Water ran over the top of the unit and dropped onto the eggs below.  A lot water also dropped uselessly off the back, which we fixed by propping up the unit at an angle.

The sink emptied surprisingly fast.  Our initial opinion:  Cautiously Impressed.

We made a few modifications to speed up the process. We loosened the top plate and wedged a couple of bolts toward the back and tightened it down, thereby making the top slanted toward the front.   All the water from the faucet now dropped onto the eggs.

A similar modification is now standard on all new The Little Egg Scrubber units.

We also moved the left foot of the unit off the tray, which allowed us to face the unit forwards instead of to the side.

The second trial washed 107 eggs in 7 minutes, 56 seconds, or 4.45 seconds per egg, not counting soaking or cartoning.  Half the time!! It was at this point we knew the Little Egg Scrubber delivers on its promise. Clean eggs in LESS than half the time their website proclaims, and it’s true!

We tested the egg washer on different sized eggs, from medium to extra large. It washed them all. We haven’t tested cracked eggs, because we don’t want  to risk fouling the rollers with egg yolk.  We have found a few slightly cracked eggs on the drying rack, but these were not broken by the machine–they were clearly already slightly cracked and had gone through the rollers without further damage.   Normally we catch cracks as we wash, because we have our hands all over the egg, but with the machine, you’re focused on keeping the eggs moving through.  In the future, close inspection as we carton the eggs will be important.

Taking the eggs off can be a bit tricky, as they are slippery and tumbling on the brushes.  We haven’t dropped any yet, but occasionally fingers get caught in and the rollers and the motor stops.  It appears that this is a fail-safe so that the eggs don’t get pulled through the bristles and broken.

The beauty of the Scrubber is that it cleans three eggs at once, whereas a person can clean only one at a time.  It also keeps the operator moving quickly to replace each egg, and so it pulls you along to keep up with the machine, although not in a stressful way.

It’s easy to operate, not overly noisy, effective, and efficient.  We was pleasantly surprised at how well it cleaned even very dirty eggs.

And it’s a very tidy compact little unit, which fits easily under my sink.

The inventor took some of our suggestions for improvement and has adjusted the design slightly.  The top is now curved to move the water forward.  He’s adding a stop/start switch.  Our sink is a standard size, so he’s looking into a different tray that will hug the washer dimensions a bit closer, although we are finding that with the modification to the top, we may not need the tray at all.

So, in conclusion, we are very happy we got to test The Little Egg Scrubber. It’s winter now, so the hens are only laying 20 per day, but we can hardly wait to use the unit when they are again at their peak. Soaking the eggs will be faster to, because we can load more into the sink at a time.

In the past, we looked at egg washers that cost $1000 and up.  For the time saving as a small farm, we were seriously considering the expense, and spread that cost over time.  But at $269 US, this Little Egg Scrubber is the best of all worlds, a three point win:  Fast.  Cheap.  And Good.

It’s a keeper.

Here’s the link to their website: The Little Egg Scrubber chicken egg washing machine

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