Preserving duck eggs

[Phisch]

Hello! I read about a method to preserve eggs for long term: water glassing eggs. We have a flock with chickens, guinea fowl and ducks. Right now, we have a good backlog of duck eggs as well as chicken. Most of what I've read is that you need to water glass very clean, unwashed eggs. But our duck eggs are always muddy and that seems to be the norm for duck eggs in general. Has anyone tried water glassing duck eggs that are a little on the messy side? I'd be open to suggestions on how to save the eggs besides freezing, too. Thanks!

 

[KaleIAm]

Fascinating, I've never heard of that! My good friend enjoys preserving my ducks' eggs. She often pickles them or makes salted eggs. Those methods don't last as long as the water glassing method, but my friend enjoys them a lot.

 

[Phisch]

I love the idea of pickling because I pretty much love pickled anything. But I'd love to use the eggs for baking so that means I'd love to have them in an uncooked state. I guess I could still try this but just with a few eggs and then check around Christmas or so. Maybe it will work? I can always do a float test before using. I think that with duck eggs, as far as my limited experience shows, if the egg is bad it is a glaringly obvious bad.

 

[KaleIAm]

I love the idea of pickling because I pretty much love pickled anything. But I'd love to use the eggs for baking so that means I'd love to have them in an uncooked state. I guess I could still try this but just with a few eggs and then check around Christmas or so. Maybe it will work? I can always do a float test before using. I think that with duck eggs, as far as my limited experience shows, if the egg is bad it is a glaringly obvious bad.

The float test has always worked consistently well for me!

Do your ducks lay in one spot consistently? Mine used to lay wherever they felt like it - often where they had been sleeping all night, resulting in poop smeared shells. I got some fake eggs and put them in a nest box. My ducks started reliably laying exclusively in the nest box and only once or twice a year pooped in the next box. The eggs weren't pristine like store bought eggs but were dramatically cleaner than before. This won't help with your currently supply of eggs, but perhaps this could help with future eggs. Since the article you posted says to not wash the bloom off the eggs I thought this could be useful.

 

[Phisch]

They’re in a coop with chickens and our ducks lay either in the nesting boxes or in a spot where the chickens poop can be. They pretty much follow the chickens’ laying habits. While we have many nesting boxes all the girls fight over only two of them and the ducks seem to follow suit. One duck out of three is more of her own thinker and hides hers sometimes-we have yet to discover where (or maybe she just doesn’t lay daily?).

The float test has always worked consistently well for me!

Do your ducks lay in one spot consistently? Mine used to lay wherever they felt like it - often where they had been sleeping all night, resulting in poop smeared shells. I got some fake eggs and put them in a nest box. My ducks started reliably laying exclusively in the nest box and only once or twice a year pooped in the next box. The eggs weren't pristine like store bought eggs but were dramatically cleaner than before. This won't help with your currently supply of eggs, but perhaps this could help with future eggs. Since the article you posted says to not wash the bloom off the eggs I thought this could be useful.

 

[corriemartin]

Do most of everyone's ducks lay daily? My eight Swedish blues (hatched beginning of May) are producing between four and six eggs a day. Is that just because they're young or is that about what I can expect?