Hidden eggs

terbutler

In the Brooder
Sep 7, 2021
13
47
43
Hi there!

Another newbie question from me :) We have had our 3 chickens for about 2 weeks now and only had a couple soft eggs in the first few days then nothing. We were starting to get worried (the girls are apparently about ~170 days old), but today I found 2 hidden eggs in the bamboo mess in the back of their run. I've been checking but it's hard to find anything back there!

Ideas on how to get them to start laying in their nesting boxes or at least somewhere in the coop? I'm not looking forward to having have an egg hunt every day :)

Thanks!
 
Hi there!

Another newbie question from me :) We have had our 3 chickens for about 2 weeks now and only had a couple soft eggs in the first few days then nothing. We were starting to get worried (the girls are apparently about ~170 days old), but today I found 2 hidden eggs in the bamboo mess in the back of their run. I've been checking but it's hard to find anything back there!

Ideas on how to get them to start laying in their nesting boxes or at least somewhere in the coop? I'm not looking forward to having have an egg hunt every day :)

Thanks!
Do you have any fake eggs? You can use anything generally egg-shaped, like a golf ball, too. Put the fake eggs in the nest boxes, and eventually they should get the point. Try to check for eggs frequently so you can pick up any that have been laid in the wrong location.
 
Do you have any fake eggs? You can use anything generally egg-shaped, like a golf ball, too. Put the fake eggs in the nest boxes, and eventually they should get the point. Try to check for eggs frequently so you can pick up any that have been laid in the wrong location.
Great idea. Will try that! Any ideas on how I can tell if the recovered "hidden" eggs are still safe for consumption? Any rules about that I should be aware of? Like I said....newbie!
 
We found dozens of hidden eggs and tried the float test. If the egg floats in a bowl of water, even a little bit, it's not good for human consumption. If the egg stays flat on the bottom of the bowl, it should be good. You can use the way it looks and smells when you crack it open also. We threw out all the eggs that attempted to float and fed the others back to the the hens after they were cooked. Hope this helps.
 
Great idea. Will try that! Any ideas on how I can tell if the recovered "hidden" eggs are still safe for consumption? Any rules about that I should be aware of? Like I said....newbie!
We found dozens of hidden eggs and tried the float test. If the egg floats in a bowl of water, even a little bit, it's not good for human consumption. If the egg stays flat on the bottom of the bowl, it should be good. You can use the way it looks and smells when you crack it open also. We threw out all the eggs that attempted to float and fed the others back to the the hens after they were cooked. Hope this helps.
The float test is only an indicator of how recently the egg was laid. The older the egg, the larger the air cell, and the more likely the egg is to float. An egg can still be good, and float just a little bit. If it rises clear to the top of the water, it might even still be good, but it's very old so I personally wouldn't eat it. If it sinks, and the narrow end of the egg doesn't even rise up, it was probably laid in the last 1-3 days. After the float test, I always crack the egg into a bowl before each use to visually inspect and smell the egg. I found a nest of 22 eggs in the woods one day, 18 of the eggs were all from one hen, so the oldest one was probably anywhere from 18-25 days old. A few hovered off the bottom of the cup during the float test, but all of them were eaten!
 
Depending on location, outside conditions, duration, eggs left outside can be harvest up to a month after being deposited and still be good. Cooler temps are better than hotter. Slow temp changes in a narrow range are better than big swings over the course of a day. Any egg found sitting in water should de discarded. (allrelate to the bloom on an egg, and its ability to keep the outside "out". Cool dry eggs are good - anytime moisture is present on the shell, it becomes much easier for "bad things" to enter. Remember that egg conitues to be used as a growth medium for all kinds of thingsyou probably don't want to injest.

Note that the float test tells you NOTHING about the egg's safety, only its relative age. Egg shells are porous, as time passes, moisture escapes, creating an ever larger air cell. At sufficient time, the egg will "stand up" at the bottom of the glass. Some days later, it will float.

As a general rule, I discard (or feed back to the birds) every egg which may have been in the run more than 24 hours, but I can easily afford to do so. In other circumstances, a week wouldn't bother me any (I'm in a hot, humid environment) though I'd crack each egg into a seperate bowl first. I also don't sell eggs over a week old except at request. (Older eggs are easier to peel when hard boiling. USDA rules allow you, potentially, to go over 30 days and still be deemed safe for human consumption...

/edit sorry for spelling errors. hope you can figure it out. Didn't sleep well last night and decafeinated. Too tired to fix it right now. :caf
 
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As a rule we don't eat eggs we don't know the age of (ate a bad egg when I was younger because we thought it was a guinea egg due to the shape [it was just a weird chicken egg, doesn't look anything like a guinea egg now that I've seen them] and passed the smell off as well. I got SO sick and it tasted so bad I only ate half of it before realizing it was probably bad.)
 
As a rule we don't eat eggs we don't know the age of (ate a bad egg when I was younger because we thought it was a guinea egg due to the shape [it was just a weird chicken egg, doesn't look anything like a guinea egg now that I've seen them] and passed the smell off as well. I got SO sick and it tasted so bad I only ate half of it before realizing it was probably bad.)
That is our feeling, not worth the chance of getting one of the family or friends sick.
 

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