eggs on coop floor, don't know when they laid

[donjr721]

i went to the coop yesterday when i got home from work and found my first eggs. there were 5 all together in one spot. they were not in the nest boxes. i check the boxes every day by opening the lids on the outside of the coop. it has been a few days since i opened the main coop door. i don't know how long the eggs have been there. one was broken, it didn't have any bad smell to it, i cracked open one of the remaining four, it didn't look or smell bad either.

are these eggs still safe to eat? we went out this mornining and i found one in the nest box. i think one of my dominiques is the layer. we have RIR's, Doms, Comets, EE.

 

[4 luv of eggs]

What I have read here is that you cover them in water. A fresh egg will lay on it's side. The older the egg is the more it will float....the end will lift off the bottom. If it floats on top it's bad and should be discarded. Those that stay submerged are good to eat. You should still break them separately in a dish to make sure.

The broken one shouldn't be eaten but you can scramble it and feed it back to your chickens. If they are only a few days old, they should be fine though. The weather is cooling off now and as long as they aren't cracked you should be able to eat them. I would just be careful.

BTW, congrats on your first eggs!

 

[Judy]

Toss the broken one -- if yI wouldn't eat it, I wouldn't feed it to my chickens, either. For the rest, do as you wish, but next time, test them with the float test described above, while in the shell, of course.

 

[donjr721]

thank you. i did throw out the broken one. i will remember the float test. i know the egg i got this morning is good, it wasn't there yesterday. my chickens have a lot of catching up to do. they owe me for 24 weeks worth of feed and care. lol.

 

[fordmommy]

When in doubt, do the float test. If they float....

If they sink.....YUM!

 

[TheWaddler]

The eggs stay good and fresh for a long time. Only in America is it common practice to refrigerate your eggs, most countries just leave the eggs sitting on the counter for up to a month and still use them. So they could have spent more than a week down there and they would be fine, at the very least to cook up and serve to the chickens themselves, mine love egg.

 

[mom'sfolly]

I don't refrigerate my eggs anymore, They sit in a pretty basket on the counter. When the basket gets too full, I give some away; and I empty the basket every now and again with the ones on the bottom going for hard boiled eggs.

When I have found large hidden nests, I've done the float test. After a two week vacation, I found fifteen eggs. They had been laid in the Texas heat. Everyone of them sank, and they tasted mighty fine. Eggs stay fresh an amazingly long time without refrigeration....which really makes me wonder about store bought eggs.

 

[Pheonix]

Are you sure about leaving them out on the counter for a month? In Europe and Asia they leave them on the counter and don't refrig them because they use them within a few days of buying them. Europe doesn't usually stock up on food, they get things fresh and use it up every few days from what I've seen.

But yes, the float test is the way to know. I usually hard boil the old ones since the old ones are the ones that come out of the shell easier. And you throw them in water to boil them so the ones that float there might be bad.

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
Yes--longer if it isn't especially hot. As long as they aren't washed first they'll keep. Americans have been brainwashed by the USDA regulations for commercial producers that are required to wash eggs because of the conditions in which they are produced.

 

[TheWaddler]

Quote:
Yes I am sure, they don't stock up on food in Europe because their refrigerators are half the size of ours and their communities are built around everything being walking distance. They don't pasteurize their eggs, they go straight to the market. My GF lived in Australia/New Zealand for 6 months and she never saw eggs refrigerated. They sit on the shelves in the stores and once bought people just keep them in the pantry.

One day we left our eggs out while at work so we google'd about how long eggs last and after reading up on several articles saw that we in America are the only people who refrigerate our eggs and worry about spoilage after a few hours