How do you keep your eggs??

[Totes Quackers]

My lovely ladies have just started laying eggs, I'm just wondering what is the best way to keep them, fridge? room temperature? etc and how long will they keep for? We only have 6 chooks and at the moment only have 1 that is laying so we are fighting over who gets to eat the eggs but eventually we will have more then we can eat in a day! (hopefully!)
Cheers!

 

[gryeyes]

I don't refrigerate mine. I keep them in cartons on the kitchen counter. They will last for several weeks there, just fine.

 

[Imp]

I really is your choice.
A few weeks on the counter or a few months in the fridge.
If you are polling I wash and store in the fridge.

Imp

 

[Akane]

Usually mine sat around on the counter for a week and then went in the fridge. We had so many eggs that sometimes eggs were in there 6 months before they'd get tossed to the dogs. They often taste fine up to that point but will start to get thick from the white evaporating. I never washed an egg. If it was too dirty it went to the dogs. If it was slightly dirty it might get rinsed before being cracked to avoid contaminating the dish but washing takes the protective coating off the egg and helps get bacteria in to the egg so washing and then storing for very long even in the fridge never seemed like a good order to do things.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

All of mine are washed and refrigerated daily.

The longest I've ever kept eggs in the fridge was four months. They were thin and watery by then, but still safe to eat. Mother Earth News did an experiment that way some time ago and got up to six months in the fridge with theirs.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

We don't wash and refrigerate. Now that it's not freezing out they stay in the nest box till evening.

The trick is keeping the hens from sleeping in the nesting boxes and changing out the straw nesting. My eggs are clean.

 

[JasonLF]

A.T. Hagan :

All of mine are washed and refrigerated daily.

The longest I've ever kept eggs in the fridge was four months. They were thin and watery by then, but still safe to eat. Mother Earth News did an experiment that way some time ago and got up to six months in the fridge with theirs.

I have been reading posts here for about a month, and have read a couple different 'conclusions' from this Mother Earth News experiment and wondered what they actually did find out. This appears to be the article from 1977. Since I can not post links yet you will need to copy and paste.

motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/1977-11-01/Fresh-Eggs.aspx


Their conclusion was unwashed eggs keep better than washed eggs, and eggs stored in a sealed container between 35-40F kept longest (for at least 7 months). Their methods were a bit 'flawed' (should have reduced the variables used by each sample), It only showed that unwashed farm eggs kept better than washed supermarket eggs, and eggs do keep longer refrigerated.​

 

[wsdareme]

Quote:
X 2

 

[BlackBart]

I wash them and they are sold the next day

 

[woodmort]

Right now the 3 dozen (+/-) I collected yesterday are sitting in a pail on the kitchen floor. When I get to it--which is before I do today's collecting--I'll put the clean ones in eggs cartons that will sit on the kitchen counter until I either sell them or they accumulate to the point my DW makes me put them in our spare, down-cellar refrigerator. As I sort through, any that are really dirty are washed and put in the kitchen refrigerator. I really see no reason to refrigerate unwashed eggs except under duress--they will keep just fine without it. BTW I get around 18 dozen a week and sell 6 dozen, we use between 2 and 3--the rest are either stored until my daughters come home in which case they take them all, or are sent to the local food bank.