Leaving chickens while out of town

We are leaving for 5 days and do not have anyone who can come and collect the eggs. We getting approximately 9 a day. Is it ok just to let them pile up in the nesting boxes?
I would not expect any big problems.

Of course you will probably come home to a pile of eggs in the nestboxes.

If the eggs look normal at that point, you can probably collect them all and eat them.

Things that might make the eggs unfit to eat:
--frozen eggs can split open, letting bacteria in through the crack.
--if some of the eggs get broken, you might find a sticky mess with bacteria growing on the outside of the shells and contaminating the insides.
--chicks can start to grow inside of eggs if they are fertile (if you have a rooster) AND if the eggs are kept warm (a hen goes broody or the weather is as hot as an incubator). It would be safe to eat these eggs, but most people do not want to. (If you have no rooster, this will not happen. If no hens go broody, and if the weather was not hot, then this will not happen even if you do have a rooster.)

If you do not want to think about which eggs to eat, you can collect them all up, cook them all, and feed them back to the chickens.
 

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