I had a couple of weird eggs from my hen, "Nettie', this past week. They were frozen and cracked, so I let then thaw and kept them refrigerated for a couple days before I used them. When I cracked them into the frying pan for scrambling, the yolks were hard and stayed ball-shaped! I poked at them, but they wouldn't give. I cut into them, and the texture was like hard boiled yolks! (I didn't eat them) I can't find any posts about this kind of thing. Has anyone come across this? I don't know if the freezing/cracking had anything to do with it, or if they were that way to begin with. She only started laying New Year's Eve, and the only other odd eggs were one with no shell, and one with a wrinkly-looking shell. Thanks!
I'm not sure if the freezing would have had anything to do with the yolks being hard or not, but if they are cracked before you get to them, I would say just cook them up and feed them back to the chickens (that or throw them away) From what I'm learning, it seems to be normal for new layers to have some flukey eggs for the first little bit of their career. I found a few pieces of feed in one of my eggs the other day, heh.
I think it's the freezing. I read on this site a while back that you can freeze eggs for later use, like when the hens aren't laying as much in the winter. So, couple of month ago I cracked 8 eggs into a freezer bag to make a winter quiche out of. Today, I thawed them, and they're the same texture you describe. They wouldn't scramble; the yolks were dense and held their shape. Strange. I got them blended up enough to cook with and went ahead and made the quiche, which turned out fine, but: strange. If I freeze eggs in the future, I'll scramble them first.
It's from the freezing. The same thing has happened to us when we haven't gotten out to the coop fast enough. I ended up just scrambling them up and giving them to the chickens as a treat. They scrambled up weird, but apparently they tasted alright because the girls ate them up quick!
It is good to know I'm not alone here. One of my girls laid a shell-less egg yesterday. When I reached into the nest for the egg I felt the soft, squishy whites and a solid round ball of yolk. I figured the egg froze during the night and was thawed by the time I got there. Yesterday we had outside temps of 10 degrees (F) while inside the coop it was 50 degrees (F). I love that sun!
