The NFC B-Day Chat Thread

From what you've mentioned, it sounds like Sunny has done very well in the potty training department!
Yes, I left her inside her pen when I shopped yesterday and she didn't use the pee pad. It helps that I am mostly here and make sure she gets outside at least every 2 hours. And Mini sets a good example. Very few accidents any more, yay!
 
So this is kind of random and I’m sorry if this isn’t the right place for it but I couldn’t find an answer for it by Googling or searching the site so I thought I would ask here....

I have found several buried eggs in the nest boxes over the last few weeks. The first two were maybe like a week or two ago and they weren’t buried very far and passed the float test so I think the must have recently accidentally gotten covered but I decided to just not risk it and chucked them in the woods. Anyway, today I found another buried egg, not very far down, but decided I better dig down and try to uncover anymore/see if there were any others. Well, I found 2 more in that nest box way down near the bottom and another one in another nest box again way down near the bottom. One felt cool/coldish like it had been there a while. The others weren’t warm or hot or anything but not cold either. Idk. Anyway, my question is, are these safe? I am assuming they are not and I think I read something a while ago to never risk it with any found eggs and not eat them or sell them or anything so that is the approach I have been taking. I think it was for free range chickens though but probably still applies to buried eggs. Anyway, I’ve been taking that approach because I’d rather be safe than sorry, especially after my horrible food poisoning incident, but at the same time, I hate to waste all these eggs. When it was just one or two it wasn’t bad but FOUR!? That’s so many to just waste. Can I feed them back to the chickens? Are they at least safe enough for them? Or maybe I could just bake them or something? Or are they not safe enough for anything and I should just chuck them?

And I also think my nesting boxes are way too big and deep and wayyyyy too many shavings in there so I guess maybe I will have to thin some out? I just tried to make it nice and comfy and deep and padded for them haha but I guess maybe they’re spoiled and I should put less shavings in and/or check regularly so this doesn’t happen again. Maybe I could use straw? I have it REALLY deep though. I think that’s the problem. Although I never had issues before. At least not that I noticed.

Anyway, do you think the eggs are safe for anything?
 
KD, crack them individually in a bowl and you'll know if they are bad. Bad eggs leave little doubt in your mind/nose. They are definitely safe to feed back to the chickens. I prefer to boil & crush eggs that I feed back. And in the future dig through the nest box to find any others that are hidden so you won't encounter this issue again. I have eggs in my pantry that are over a month old and still good.

Now one other thing you may want to check before cracking and that is to candle them. If no one's been broody, then it's unlikely that you have any development, but again, even if you don't see it while candling, you'll know when you crack it open.
 
KD, crack them individually in a bowl and you'll know if they are bad. Bad eggs leave little doubt in your mind/nose. They are definitely safe to feed back to the chickens. I prefer to boil & crush eggs that I feed back. And in the future dig through the nest box to find any others that are hidden so you won't encounter this issue again. I have eggs in my pantry that are over a month old and still good.

Now one other thing you may want to check before cracking and that is to candle them. If no one's been broody, then it's unlikely that you have any development, but again, even if you don't see it while candling, you'll know when you crack it open.

Thank you for all the info Bob!! This is really helpful! I will try doing that. Maybe outside just in case. :lau and good to know they won’t be totally wasted. I think I’ll give them back to them if they’re not rotten. And yeah, I’m definitely going to have to do that. Sometimes I’m bad about collecting daily but I’ve been way better about that lately and even when I do collect daily, I don’t always notice buried eggs, so I think I’m going to have to start digging through the boxes. And maybe less shavings. I think the boxes are like 18x18x18 and I probably have like a 6 inches to a foot of shavings in them. :oops: that’s good to know they could still be safe though but would a pantry be different or safer than sitting out in the coop? It’s been in the 80s for a while.

And we don’t have any roosters so no worries about development!
 
Morning Sean I am curious What do you do? :pop
I'm in Environmental consulting. Air, water and waste. Mainly air and water. Monitoring air emissions, sampling water supplies and monitoring waste water run off for various companies. Also do lead sampling for a few battery manufactures.
 

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