I swear, this is the coolest thing ever... I had to make deshelled eggs for one of my classes. I had never done if before. It is so cool! If you have never done it, you have to do it just to see how interesting it is. All you do is place a raw egg fully submerged for 24-48 hours in vinegar (I just used regular white vinegar). The shell will slowly start to dissolve away. One of mine only took about 24 hours, but the other took close to 48. Once you can see that the shell has mostly dissolved, you can take the egg out and rinse it off. You are left with an egg just held together by the membrane, no shell. They almost don't even feel like real eggs! They have sort of the consistency of a rubber ball. Go try it! You will be so glad you did!
Oh, and I should add- They are not at all like a shell-less egg laid by a hen. They are completely different.
You do this with a raw egg. Mahonri- they are different because they are completely formed, egg-shape, transparent, and very solid to the touch. I have never had an unformed egg laid that looks like this in the 25+ plus years of having chickens (not that it might not be possible). Anyway, it is really cool (at least I thought so). It literally is like an egg shaped transparent rubber ball.
It is a great science fair experiment, you can do it in several jars and show the "stages". My son, who is now 34, did it when he was grade school, when it was a lot more casual, and he won a blue ribbon. It's amazing the things vinegar can do!!!
We did this last year in science class; really cool! The egg shell turned all sticky and eventually dissolved right off the egg.
