Egg Day on the Farm

When I started prepping, one of the first skills I learned was how to save eggs for storage. We lived in a location that would not allow any farms type animals. Since a properly stored egg will last up to nine months I knew this was one item I could always have on hand.

Once we moved to the farm, I knew we would be getting chickens as soon as possible. We now have 10 Red Sex Link chickens & a roo. That is a LOT of eggs for just two people. So I am determined to sell our extra eggs at a profit.

Currently, once a week is egg day on the farm. Depending how many eggs I have, how many I need to get ready to sell and how many I will need to store determines what my day is like.

For example as I am writing this I am returning from a two week vacation. Mr. Perky has been gathering the eggs while I am gone. When eggs are fresh from the chicken they have what is called a bloom on them. It is a protective layer that surrounds the egg & covers the 10's of thousands of pores in the eggshell. It's natures way of keeping the eggs a lot fresher longer. If you are raising our own and only have a couple hens, leave the bloom on, washing them just before you use them. Just leave them on the counter. That's right, leave them on the counter. It might surprise you to know in a lot of countries you would never find eggs in a refrigerated section of a store.Often you are able to get eggs from a farm that are not washed. This really is a bonus.

On egg day, I start by cleaning the sinks extremely well. Then I gently wash and rinse the bloom and other stuff off of the eggs with warm water. This is usually about 20 degrees warmer that room temperature. From what I understand, cold water can draw "stuff" into the pores of the eggshell, when what you want to do is make sure everything is washed off.

 

I set them out on a towel to let them dry. Then I weigh each egg to determine the size of the egg. The "large" ones (which look really small to me) & the ginormous ones are set aside.
Mostly my gals lay extra large and jumbo eggs, with an average range of 67-75 grams each.

 

In our case, since we are still working on developing our customer base I will often put a very thin layer of organic coconut oil on the eggs at this point. Coconut oil is a natural method of covering those pores on the egg shells again. This is a great method of storing eggs, this protective layer will enable you to keep fresh eggs in for fridge for many months. It is so easy to do, I just taught someone "how to" a few weeks ago in a matter of seconds.

Last step: I put the extra large & jumbo eggs in cartons and pop them in the fridge. I mix up the sizes in the carton. 

I started with some eggs cartons that only hold up to extra large eggs & discovered I probably should have started with cartons for jumbo eggs. So now I have both sizes. I got my cartons from Amazon. Trust me I did check out prices. As a newbie chicken farmer, I really like the fact I can order smaller lots of cartons at a reasonable price.

 

What I do here is simply share our preparedness journey. We would love it if you joined our Perky Prepping Gramma community on Facebook.

  

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