Frozen eggs?

[louloubean]

it's been really cold here, and i've gotten cold eggs, but apparently not frozen, as none have cracked.....

i'm in upstate NY, and the hen house is insulated, the boxes have pine shavings, but there is no heat at all in the house.
besides the deep litter.

 

[happyhensny]

Since raising hens for eggs, our families outlook on waste has definitely been affected. Eggs frozen, cracked or can't be used, always leave me feeling bad. Hen did the work and now look! Darn!

 

[isabrownmom]

This is my first winter with hens so I didn't know what to expect when I didn't get an egg in time! My first frozen and cracked egg I just sat it on the counter until room temp. and then thought what the heck, might as well steam it and see if it's edible. It was unchanged in texture and looks and delicious!!

 

[Overeasyplz]

Yea, we eat our frozens, too. I just keep clean straw in the nestboxes. When the temps are around 30 the eggs are ok but sometimes for days the temps are single digit.. so eggs freeze. I just use them that day, let them thaw and make egg sandwich or cake or something. Even our special needs dog gets a fozen egg evey now and then. Her skin is getting better

 

[CARS]

Quote:
Nothing needs to go to waste. Like someone said, if you cook it and it looks good, it's going to be good. If it looks too bad to eat or tastes funny after the first bite, feed it back to the animals. Chickens love egg. Just make sure it doesn't look like what they lay

Or you'll have egg eating before it gets a chance to freeze

 

[Tala]

My chicks don't have very good insulation because they are mini-molting, so they have a heat lamp in their doghouse/coop. Well the adult chickens used to live and lay there too.
After I added the lamp, suddenly all the hens started going back in the warmed doghouse nest box to lay their eggs ---- fine by me!!!

 

[alpinefarm]

Quote:
Nothing needs to go to waste. Like someone said, if you cook it and it looks good, it's going to be good. If it looks too bad to eat or tastes funny after the first bite, feed it back to the animals. Chickens love egg. Just make sure it doesn't look like what they lay

Or you'll have egg eating before it gets a chance to freeze

I use frozen eggs, just make sure to cook them well, not use them in eggnog or something.
I also freeze my extra eggs for later use. I break them into a freezer container. Great way to not let any precious chicken work go to waste!

 

[Akane]

You can put frozen eggs to plenty of use. The ones that don't get dirty can be eaten but I would do it soon and not store them. The ones you don't want to eat can be fed to pets. My dogs love to get them still frozen. I pop them out of the shell and they play with them like ice cubes until they lay down to eat them. The cats prefer theirs at least thawed and if you feed egg frequently to cats it should be cooked. Too many raw eggs binds to certain nutrients and causes problems in cats. If you have no other pets scramble the eggs , include the shell if you want, and feed them back to the chickens.

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

My hens lay early too so I keep a heat lamp out there facing the nest boxes and that keeps them from freezing. Stays right around 35 degrees in my coop at the height of the nest boxes. It's worth keeping it on during the day so the eggs don't freeze.

 

[riftnreef]

Thanks for all the replies. Nice to know I'm not alone on that one. I guess that is one of those things I didn't plan for. I don't recall having frozen eggs when I was a kid, but thats been a while ago...

My coop is a converted garden shed with no insulation. The hens don't seem to mind a bit, but with daytime temps hovering near single digits for a while I guess it was bound to happen.

Eggs that freeze a bit but don't crack, still safe to store for a week and eat? I can only assume that some of the eggs harvested were frozen to some degree, but never cracked the shell...I just want to make sure before I poison my family...