Eggs

Oddly enough I wondered about this. So thanks.

I always used it as an analogy–why can eggs be refrigerated from bird to store and sell for $3.00 per dozen and wine suffers the vagaries of temperature abuse while sometimes costing hundreds of dollars per bottle.

Risk of consumer lawsuits for spoiled eggs. No jury will care about spoiled wine.

Chickens are paid peanuts (or corn).

Indeed. How often do any of us see an wholesale truck, without a refer, being unloaded to a store in the middle of July or August?

And the eggs, in most states I would guess, are checked by the Egg Board, from which you must buy a license. They come in, check your license, use a tool on a flashlight to spot check eggs, take the temp of your display case and your walk in cooler.

JD

At least eggs are light. Think of milk…gallons being transported 100s of miles in reefer trucks and still able to sell for $4-$5/gallon.

Not really, if you measure weight by contents, separate of packaging. Both eggs and milk are mainly water.

I have chickens (down to only 2 after a max of 6 at one point) and we just leave the eggs (beautiful pale tiffany blueish color) on the counter.

Article is somewhat incorrect. Unwashed eggs that haven’t been reefer’d are fine for weeks, not the week or two the article states. I’m not an expert and don’t eat eggs, but my wife’s aunt is.

Is what, an eggspert?

Moral of the story is leave the cuticle. On occasion we have eggs several months old, as do many in the community. It’s a product of the fact that production waxes and wanes significantly throughout the seasons. There is very very scant reason to be concerned with organic eggs with intact cuticle and lack of refrigeration. We eat them all the time and they are always just as good and often better than store bought. Free ranging in warmer weather with insects is always the best. They should also mention that salmonella infestation is nearly zero in small broods. Industrial concentration is by far the primary culprit.

Speaking of eggs, does anybody buy/use Egglands best eggs? And like them ?? They taste odd to me and we don’t buy them. Anybody else not like them.

We buy organic brown eggs as an FYI .

We now have 40+ chickens at the ranch. I get 3 to 4 dozen eggs a week.

I couple things that lead us to getting our own chickens. Trying to eat less animal meat and really only from farms in the county (except Flannery) and using eggs more as a staple protein. We also learned to read the dates on the cartons.

In France they vaccinate the chickens for salmonella so there is no risk to not washing the eggs. Our eggs seem to travel farther and sit much longer, we were routinely getting eggs 2-3+ weeks old from the store chain or natural. Room temp eggs and butter make better pastries and bread anyway. We just keep them on the counter.

There is a 3 digit code on the end of the cartons, January 1 is 001 December 31 is 365. Here is a link to an expansion Cracking the Date Code on Egg Cartons | UNL Food

When my brother and sister-in-law adopted two chickens, my preconceptions about eggs went out the window.

Fresh (<24 Hrs) eggs are insanely better than anything in the store (IMHO). They were getting three eggs a day! I didn’t know that was possible. Every day was like an Easter Egg Hunt for my youngest nephew.

When I sailed in the tropics we would keep our flats of eggs in a vented, shaded box on the deck (in a place with no spray). They would last for a month or so if left as is and for about 3 months if we oiled the outside of the shells when we bought them (just rub each egg with a coconut oil soaked cloth).

Growing up, our family farm kept chickens; outside during the day and locked in the coop at night because of foxes/coyotes. We would go out there for days at a time with my grandparents. When it was time for breakfast, or if something was being baked, we would run down to the chicken coop and pull some eggs out from under a hen!

We now buy them (free range & organic) at the farmers market. I love eggs and avoid store bought as much as I can.