How long do freshly laid eggs last in fridge?

[oif1man]

Nice tractor! Eggs will last much longer than we believe, still in the shell anyway. I once threw a carton of eggs away because they were past the date. The one thing you should be aware of is that the eggs won't be as clean as you think. It's normal for dirt and even feces to be on them. I found that hay or straw in the nesting box reduces it but won't eliminate it. Also, sometimes they'll lay eggs in odd places.

Also, as I learned, they will stop laying in the winter and don't be alarmed when they moult during this time. I thought mine were diseased as feathers came out. By march or april they'll have their new feathers and you'll have a lot off eggs. Don't panic like I did my first winter.

[9111315]

. . . even if the straw is clean . . . they still come from a hen's butt.

[ForestBeekeeper]

Originally Posted by 9111315

. . . even if the straw is clean . . . they still come from a hen's butt.

Well, ...

I have spoken with people who 'say' they want 'free-range' and hormone-free. Yet at market they prefer to buy eggs from caged-hens whose layer-feed is loaded with estrogen.

I see the customers doing it, I see the vendors, I know the differences between how each vendors is operating.

What they say they want, is not what they buy.

I have even lowered my prices, lower prices do not overcome the look of clean uniform eggs.

[9111315]

Advertise them as:


Hen Butt Eggs
(Not from the store)



. . . then again, you may attract an unconventional crowd that you were not looking for.

[utefan]

I keep about a dozen or so hens. I keep the laying boxes filled with wood shavings I get at the local feed store. The hens have a fenced pasture but all come back to the hen house to lay. We have all colors off eggs also. I don't sell them, just supply for my family and one other who have financial needs. I don't wash them either. I store mine in a wire basket in the fridge. I've never had an egg go bad and I've been doing this since I was a kid. It's the same way Grandma did it. I give any cracked eggs to the dogs and they love them. Hens are easy to keep and give something back...even if on occasion it has poop on it.

[txflyer]

The lady in one of the Doomsday Preppers show was coating her eggs with mineral oil.

She was saying they last for years that way.

[Mr. Griff]

I learned a lot off this thread. To me leaving an egg out of the refrigerator for more than an hour was inconceivable! When I was in Spain and Ukraine I saw eggs in the market sitting out and thought they were crazy! But now I guess it's not so bad after all. That's very useful info to have since I'll be getting chickens soon!

[9MMare]

I got 2 eggs today!

I saw one of the hens in the box...but the eggs are different colors. One off-white, one tan. Almost same size. Are they both from her? Or do they only lay one a day? (Dumb questions I know...I had been more researching coops and living conditions than practicalities!)

The previous owner says they only lay in the one box, never in the other one.

Edit: the eggs are quite different in color and even in shape. So one of the other hens must have laid too. yeah!

[POPPALUV]

Originally Posted by obleo

Years ago we tried a product called "Ke-Peg"...you take a fresh laid egg, less than 12 hours old, and if no "dirt" on it, smear this stuff on them and set them back in the carton in a cool, dry place. After 6 months, in my back room in the mtns of NM, we tried them. White, runny and yellow was flat, but tasted fine. After a year, still the same...beyond the year, we fed them to the chickens, they preferred their scrambled...lol...that's one way we tried.

Have a friend in Ireland who says she, her mother and grandmother never fridged their eggs at all, just stored them in a cool dark place unwashed. Kept for months.

Originally Posted by Stringer6

ive heard that putting , i think, mineral oil on them can make them last alot longer.

I've ben told by more than one country neighbor up at the BOL that they have kept eggs for up to 9 months in a closet w/ and w/o cleaning, BUT if you clean you must use mineral oil to seal the shell as it IS porous-like a balloon that leaks air through the larger rubber/plastic molecules...

[wildthing56]

if u coat them in mineral oil and put them in a cool dark place they will last as long as a year still tasting delicious! freash home grown are the best of course put them where they won't brake!!

[saygon1]

Stringer6 your right !
You first put plastic or latex gloves on you don't want to touch the eggs with your hands. You then completely coat the eggs, you want to keep any air from getting to them. Then put them back into the egg carton. You store them in a cool dark place. They should last over a year. This will work with store bought eggs to.

[Clawhammer]

I still don't know how you guys train your chooks to lay their eggs in the fridge in the first place!

[Bellyman]

Originally Posted by 9MMare

I got 2 eggs today!

I saw one of the hens in the box...but the eggs are different colors. One off-white, one tan. Almost same size. Are they both from her? Or do they only lay one a day? (Dumb questions I know...I had been more researching coops and living conditions than practicalities!)

The previous owner says they only lay in the one box, never in the other one.

Edit: the eggs are quite different in color and even in shape. So one of the other hens must have laid too. yeah!

I suspect that you'll probably get to the point where you'll know which hen laid an egg that day just be looking at the egg. I don't think I ever had one lay more than one egg a day but I suppose it's not impossible.

When I had my first flock of chickens, I had several different kinds, including some Auraconas, some of which laid an olive drab (green) egg, some laid a blue egg, and some laid a "pink" egg, which wasn't that much different than some of the "brown" eggs.

At that time, I knew the hens well enough to know exactly who laid an egg that day just by examining the eggs. Maybe not 100% accurate every day but I was darned close.

Oh, they all had names, too.

I was anal enough at the time that I kept a journal with all the hens' names, the dates, who laid and who didn't, kept a laying average for each hen and the group as a whole, and also kept track of the inputs such as oyster shell and grain / mash that I bought for them.

It was something I really enjoyed.

I didn't have them penned up quite the same as some do. I had a "hen house" that was maybe 4' wide by 8' long that had the nesting boxes in it and some roosts for them as well as a couple of feeders and waterers. I also had a door that I opened for them in the daytime that let them out into an area of about 1/2 acre that was fenced in with 3' high chicken wire fence. And for 20 or so chickens, they were pretty contented. I didn't often have them flying over the fence but it wasn't usually a big deal if one of them did.

Fast forward about 30 years... I've just recently seen an Amish farm where they're doing something kinda like that on a larger scale. They have several hundred chickens and several acres of ground fenced in (with much higher and more substantial fencing) and their acreage divided up so that they can move the chickens from pasture to pasture along with a portable hen house. I like that kind of setup. I like the idea that the chickens are free to come and go from the hen house as they please. They can eat as much or as little of the grain or oyster shell as they feel like. They can get out in the sun, chase bugs, take dust baths, and get fooled by that ol' rooster that's calling to them about the latest and greatest morsel of food he's found for them only because he wants a piece of... oh, never mind.

FWIW, I always had a rooster with the hens. It always seemed more natural for them to have that as a part of their lives. And it is indeed necessary if one intends to have fertile eggs.


Brian

[trampart]

MEN many years ago did a test on this very thing. They determined that eggs laid by chickens that had a rooster in the hen house and were left unwashed (with the bloom on), would keep 6 months unrefrigerated. I live in the Deep South, do not refrigerate eggs and seldom have a bad one.

[9111315]

Originally Posted by irregardless

I've hatched plenty of 10-14 day old eggs that were kept in a fridge before the last egg was collected while re-growing my flock after a catastrophic weasel attack and only was getting 0-2 eggs per day.

I really wish I knew this before. Had a Buff Orpington (Or was it a Vampier Slayer . . . I get confused sometimes) that went broody. She was laying an egg a day for over a month and they all ended up in the fridge before I realized she went broody. She laid diligently on other hens eggs.

It just seems right that a few should have been her own.

Oh well. Maybe next time.

I wonder if I'll still feel guilty about this when I make her into soup?

[BadBob]

You might be surprised to learn how long eggs sit unrefrigerated in the back of supermrkets before they are put out and are still legally fresh.

[swamppapa]

my Gmother used to dip eggs in waterglass(sodium silicate) and place them in a crock alternating layers of straw and eggs then stored them in the cellar

I just got my first bad egg from one of our hens I took it out and cracked it into a bowl it appeared moldy inside

[Catullus]

I have eaten eggs out of the refrigerator 4-6 weeks after collecting. I have heard that the mineral oil technique will keep them 6-8 months.

[Hunterjohnson84]

Where did you buy your tractor?

[barnetmill]

My experience with store bought unrefrigerated eggs is that some how fruit flies get into to them and they spoil. I buy when they are cheap the thin shelled jumbo size for my dogs. I quit eating eggs myself due to health reasons.