Do the eggs freeze?

[jvp0719]

I am sure this is a silly question. I am new so please bear with me Do the eggs freeze in the winter? If so are they ruined? If the hens lay in the evening and they are not collected until morning I would imagine they must. Right?

 

[CindyJeann]

We usually collect eggs near dusk and my girls always seem to be through laying by 3-4pm so I have never run into this problem. Of course we don't have a lot of deep freeze nights on the Arkansas/Louisiana border.

 

[akovia]

Eggs will freeze. In fact, freezing is a common way to store out of shell eggs for future use. And, I suppose they would freeze in the shell overnight, breaking the shell and rendering them useless to you. Additionally, I suspect that, come morning, the hens would find broken eggs tempting to eat, and thus begins a nasty cycle of egg eating. Hopefully you can find a way to gather your eggs before nightfall.

 

[jvp0719]

So if I get in the habit of collecting in the morning and the evening I should be good?

 

[growyourbrew]

Yes, the eggs can most definitely freeze in winter! And yes, it will freeze and the shell will crack. Usually, it will hold its shape and the hens don't notice it. The egg is not usable. Usually, I hard boil them and mush them up to feed to the chickens (mushing them prevents the hens from recognizing them as their eggs as food, which encourages the hens to eat their eggs).

 

[off-grid hen]

We had a few solid weeks where the temps didn't get above 10 degrees during the day, and went down to -5 at night. I checked for eggs in the morning, after I got home from work, and when I locked up for the night. I didn't have any eggs freeze this winter, and I do not heat my coop.

A few things help here. I have an open-front coop that is 16 ft deep. inside of my coop is white, and lots if sunshine during the day. This allows the coop to heat up when the sun shines. (The oak trees shade it in summer).

I don't know how many chickens you have, but, if you put your dummy eggs in just a couple of nests, the girls will line up to lay in those nest boxes. They are copy-cats and will see multiple eggs as an enticing place to lay, for some reason. Constant warm bodies on them keeps the eggs from freezing, but it'll be cold enough that they won't start to incubate. I put 3 golf balls in 3 nest boxes. If you're bored and get cabin fever, you can watch the egg piles move daily by moving the dummy eggs.

The water will freeze, too. I got a heated pet water bowl from petsmart, and it works like a charm.

Welcome to BYC!

 

[5hens4dogsNus]

Thank you for the hint of putting dummy eggs in. My girls hadn't layed in weeks. Yesterday morning I gave them warm creme of wheat with a bit of cayenne pepper. It's 10 degrees today. I have an LED light in the coop for 1 week. It's up out of their way. I was hoping it would stimulate them to lay. It's on all of the time. Now that they are laying should I put it on a timer? And I always crunch up the shells of their eggs tiny before returning them to eat. I appreciate this site so much!

 

[mandidevore]

I would turn the LED light off during the day, and set the time to have it come on at about 3:30-4 am. That way your chickens get enough "light" to encourage laying. Aren't chickens fun??!