When a hen lays an egg, she coats the egg in a protective bloom that helps keep bacteria out of the egg. If unwashed, they do not need refrigeration. They won't keep as long as eggs that are refrigerated though.
I grew up in England and we never refrigerated our eggs, you bought them off of an unrefigerated shelf at the store, and they were put in an egg shelf, bunkbed looking holder on the counter when we got them home, never thought to put them in the fridge - and Im still here
Now here in Florida, I do refrigerate them, just coz thats what I was taught to do when I moved here (almost 13 years ago, oh and Im a citizen now too!!!)
So either way is safe, but in my house our eggs never get more than a week old - yumm!
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They keep longer in the fridge but they're just fine on the counter or pantry for quite a while.
How long is "quite a while"? A week? Two weeks? A month?, etc.
Do any of you do the float test to check to see if eggs are good or bad? If it floats, it's bad...sinks, it's good. If it sorta bobbles (part sinking, part floating I guess the air bubble) is iffy to me & I feed those to the dogs.
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They keep longer in the fridge but they're just fine on the counter or pantry for quite a while.
How long is "quite a while"? A week? Two weeks? A month?, etc.
Do any of you do the float test to check to see if eggs are good or bad? If it floats, it's bad...sinks, it's good. If it sorta bobbles (part sinking, part floating I guess the air bubble) is iffy to me & I feed those to the dogs.
Ours are never around long enough for me to worry about a float test -- I keep about a dozen on the counter at any given time, they get rotated out and the pigs eat the excess -- but if I had to do so that's precisely what I would do.
When I had gunieas I would do the float test because I was always finding their eggs hidden in weird patches of grass and under bushes. I would find 50-75 eggs all left in a crazy pile somewhere and have no idea if they were fresh or not.
With cooped chickens or one's always laying in a nest box I don't worry about floating. They're always fresh. I also don't worry about refrigerating if I don't have room. I will put them in a basket on the counter. But, store bought eggs are in a different story. Because they are scrubbed, they have no bloom to protect them and I always keep them cold.