All my chickens are laying...What Now!!

Ways to Use Extra Eggs

I love this time of year when everything seems to come in abundance. Harvest of lots of fresh fruits and veggies, and happy chickens. Those laying hens greet you with a squat as they wait for their afternoon treat. And the nest is full of beautiful colorful eggs. Begging friends and neighbors for egg cartons, so you can share in the bounty. But there comes that moment when you start to run out of ideas, and friends and neighbors have plenty of eggs. I just love being creative with my fresh eggs. Try some of these ideas. Enjoy, Anice

https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2016/03/ways-use-extra-eggs.html

Big eggs, little eggs, brown eggs, blue eggs…

That was my best attempt at a Dr. Seuss impression… But yeah, my life can be summed up by a single word at the moment: EGGS.

The ducks are laying, the chickens are laying, I have eggs in the incubator (ready to hatch this week… eeek!), eggs on my counter, eggs in the basket, eggs falling out of my fridge. I’m drowning in eggs.

I’m giving them away, and we’re eating lots of scrambled eggs for supper, but they keep on coming. And coming… And coming. I know I’m not the only one with this wonderfully delicious problem, as I’m hearing a lot of you mention this exact same predicament lately.

So may I present– a big ginormous list of wonderful, amazing, tasty ways to use all your extra eggs. Some of these feature eggs as the star (like frittatas or crepes), while others just call for 3-4 eggs per recipe (like the quick breads or homemade pasta). Regardless, they are all good ways to put your egg stash to good use.

(You’re welcome)

50+ Ways to Use Extra Eggs

The Eggy Basics:

• How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs (and peel them easily)
• How to Make Soft Boiled Eggs
• How to Make Poached Eggs
• How to Make Perfect Scrambled Eggs
• How to Make the Perfect Fried Egg
• How to Make Eggs in a Cast Iron Skillet (that won’t stick!)

Preserving & Fermenting Eggs:

• Sriracha Pickled Eggs
• Easy Pickled Eggs
• Fermented Eggs
• How to Freeze Eggs
• How to Dehydrate Eggs

Breakfast Ideas Made with Eggs:

• Egg Waffles
• How to Make the Perfect Omelette
• Breakfast Scotch Eggs
• Egg and Bacon Maple Toast Cups
• Sweet Potato Hashbrown Egg Nests
• Scrambled Egg Breakfast Muffins
• Bell Pepper Egg-in-a-Hole
• Crustless Quiche
• Crustless Sage Quiche
• Spinach Bacon Potato Frittata
• Zucchini and Herb Frittata
• Vegetable Frittata
• Eggs Benedict Casserole
• Baked Western Omelette
• Fluffy Mushroom Souffle Omelette
• Apple Puff Pancake
• Dutch Baby Pancake
• Berry Pancake Souffle
• Sourdough French Toast
• Overnight Pumpkin French Toast Casserole
• Organic Crepes
• Slow Cooker Bread Pudding

Breads with Extra Eggs:

• Honey Maple Pumpkin Bread
• Chocolate Chip Banana Bread 
• Spiced Carrot Bread
• Braided Easy Egg Bread
• Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Lunch & Supper with Eggs:

• Egg Salad
• Deviled Eggs
• Pizza Frittata
• Twice Baked Potatoes with Eggs on Top
• Homemade Pasta
• Egg Drop Soup
• Garlic Leek Soup with Eggs

Desserts Made With Eggs:

• Maple Custard Cups
• Old-Fashioned Lemon Whey Pie
• Strawberry Meringue Shells with Lemon Curd
• Angel Food Cake with Meringue Frosting
• Lemon Meringue Pie
• Creme Brulee
• Strawberry Flan
• Homemade Angel Food Cake
• Easy Chocolate Souffle
• Homemade Eggnog

Eggy Odds & Ends:

• Coffee Smoothies
• Egg Butter Coffee
• How to Naturally Dye Easter Eggs
• DIY Liquid Fence Recipe
• DIY Flock Block Substitute
• 30+ Things to Do with Eggshells
• Should you Wash Eggs?

Collecting, storing and hatching chicken eggs

Raising Chickens 101: Collecting, Storing, and Hatching Chicken Eggs

Jul 5, 2018
https://www.almanac.com/blog/raising-chickens/raising-chickens-101-collecting-storing-and-hatching-chicken-eggs

Once you’ve eaten farm-fresh eggs, it’s hard to go back to grocery store eggs. Fresh farm eggs, free-range or not, are delicious, with bright yolks and firm whites. Give your hens ground oyster shell or a similar calcium supplement, available at farm suppliers, for strong eggshells.

Collecting Eggs

You’ll want to collect eggs every morning; hens cackling loudly are a sign or clue that they’re laying. I usually have another look in the afternoon, as well.
Oddly enough, chickens like to eat eggs as much as we do. Most egg-eaters learn on broken eggs and then begin to break eggs themselves. Chickens are opportunists and will pick at whatever looks edible. If you clean up broken eggs immediately and throw out any “eggy” straw or shavings, you can prevent egg-eating. A chicken that learns this habit can’t be cured, and others may follow her lead. You don’t want the chickens eating your eggs—you want them yourself!
You can tell what color eggs a hen will lay by the color of her ear. Yes, her ear. Birds don’t have external ears like humans do, so look for a small circle or oval of skin on the side of the head, next to the ear hole. If it’s white, your hen will lay white eggs; if it’s red, she’ll lay brown ones. There’s no difference in flavor or nutrition, but white eggs show the dyes more brightly at Easter! (Especially natural dyes, as pictured here.)

Cleaning and Storing Eggs

Eggshells have a “bloom,” a natural coating that protects the egg from bacteria. Avoid washing your eggs if you can; instead, wipe with a dry, rough cloth.
If the eggs have a little manure on them, you can wipe with a damp cloth for small spots. A really dirty egg can be submerged and scrubbed with a vegetable brush. Always use warm water; cold water will make the egg shrink inside the shell and will draw in bacteria.
Let eggs air-dry thoroughly before putting them away. (I like to sort them by color, darkest to lightest, but that’s just me!)
Put them in dated egg cartons, and store them in the fridge on a shelf—not the door, where they will get jostled with every opening/closing. For partial cartons, I mark each egg in pencil with the day it was collected. Fresh eggs are good for a month in the refrigerator.
A cooking tip: To make deviled eggs, use week-old or older eggs, not this morning’s. The shells of really fresh eggs stick and don’t peel cleanly.

Hatching Chicken Eggs

If you want chicks, you’ll need a rooster. As a rule of thumb, 10 to 12 hens per rooster is a good ratio. While you could build an incubator and supervise the development of the eggs, it’s easiest to let the hens take care of hatching.
A hen that is getting ready to nest becomes “broody.” This means that she wants to hatch her eggs. She’ll sit “tight” on the nest and resist having her eggs collected, whereas a non-broody hen will let you reach under her to collect eggs. A broody hen may even peck or screech at anyone coming near. There are ways to discourage broodiness, but why would you? The hen does all the work of hatching and raising—and you get free chicks!
If you do decide to get an incubator, a forced-air model with an automatic egg-turner is recommended, as eggs will need to be turned four to five times a day. The temperature inside the incubator should be between 99° and 102°F, while the humidity should remain between 55 and 60%. Chicken eggs will hatch after approximately 21 days. Check with your local cooperative extension service for more information.
Farm chickens can live 4 to 7 years and lay eggs for most of that time. Every year they go “off-lay” (stop laying eggs) for several months. This happens over the winter, when there’s too little daylight to trigger egg-laying. They’ll begin again in the spring.
See what to do when chickens stop laying eggs.

More of Raising Chickens 101

See more of our beginner’s guide to raising chickens:

• Raising Chickens: How to Get Started
• Choosing the Right Chicken Breeds
• How to Build a Chicken Coop
• Raising Baby Chicks
• When Chickens Stop Laying Eggs

Odd Eggs? We all get one from time to time

10 Abnormal Chicken Eggs & What You Need To Know!

So...I have to ADD my own experience of something weird inside of MY chicken egg. Last night I was cooking eggs for dinner, cracked three into the pan, the fourth had a strange oblong dark brown "thing" inside of the egg white, not the yoke. In hindsight I should have taken a photo of it in the pan. The egg was fine, I dished out this "thing" and finished cooking my eggs. When I examining it later...I am totally puzzled! It is rock hard, looks and feels like a small heavy rock but smooth surface, almost like a piece of iron. The hen has only been laying for a month. I have yet to find anything that describes it in my searching. I will post a photo on my facebook group. Anice

 

July 22, 2015 by Maat
 https://thefrugalchicken.com/abnormal-chicken-eggs/

Abnormal chicken eggs: If you own chickens, it’s just a matter of time before you get one that makes you scratch your head and wonder “What the heck?”

Don’t worry. Usually, abnormal eggs just happen, and although they can mean your chicken is sick or stressed, they aren’t necessarily something to be concerned about. 

(New to chicken keeping? Grab my bestselling book Chickens: Naturally Raising A Sustainable Flock for less than the price of takeout here!)

Your chicken is a live animal, and sometimes, just like humans, things go awry without explanation.

There’s a few abnormal eggs you’ll likely run into regularly, while others are uncommon (although clearly not unheard of). 

If you’d rather learn about abnormal chicken eggs by listening, you can download my podcast about it here:




It’s important not to get too concerned about abnormal chicken eggs – while they can indicate a problem, your best bet is to watch your flock for signs of stress or illness, and remember that sometimes abnormal chicken eggs just happen.

With a couple of exceptions, abnormal chicken eggs are still okay to eat (and I tell you which ones aren’t!).

1. Soft Shell/No Shell Eggs

It can be unnerving (and kind of cool) the first time you see chicken eggs without their shell. The eggs can be missing the whole shell or just part of it, but the membrane is still intact.

Adding the shell is one of the last steps a chicken takes to produce eggs, and sometimes, for a variety of reasons, that step is skipped.

In pullets, soft shell eggs sometimes happen with her first egg – the pullet’s system just hasn’t kick started correctly, but it will soon catch up.

Sometimes the cause is insufficient calcium, which can happen with a chicken who’s been eating a grower ration that’s lower in calcium than a layer feed. 

In established layers, there’s a few reasons for abnormal soft shell eggs, including insufficient calcium or protein absorbed, inflammation of the oviduct, or heat stress. Hens also coming back into laying can lay abnormal soft shell eggs.

Another reason is if the previous egg stayed too long in your chicken’s shell gland, causing the soft shell egg to be laid too soon.  

Can you eat it?
If the soft shell chicken eggs remain unbroken until I find them, I usually feed them to the pigs or throw them on the compost pile.

Although they might be okay, I’m personally not comfortable eating them because I don’t know what kind of nasties have passed through the membrane.

2. Lash Eggs

Among the most disturbing of abnormal chicken eggs to see is a lash egg.

Lash eggs aren’t actually eggs, but rather the result of an infection called Salpingitis – an infection and inflammation of the oviduct. Lash eggs are generally shaped like eggs, since they still travel through the oviduct.

Lash eggs are the accumulation of pus, egg material, and possibly tissue laid by the hen. It can be soft or hard, and is comprised of layers of the shed material. 

Photo courtesy of Timber Creek Farm

While some chicken keepers ring the death knell if they have a chicken that lays abnormal eggs like lash eggs, the bottom line is it’s an infection – consult your vet to see if it can be treated. 

Can you eat it?

You’d be crazy to eat a lash egg.

3. Incomplete pigmentation

“I forgot to change the toner cartridge” is a common joke when a chicken owner comes across an egg that’s not uniformly colored.




Eggs not uniformly colored are normal eggs that just have a funny pigmentation that day – it’s a minor flaw.

Abnormal chicken eggs like this is are usually caused by some sort of stress, such as heat stress. The hen is working overtime to keep her body cool – which means she has less energy to put into making eggs.

Poor nutrition or a viral infection are other potential causes.

Can you eat it?

I’ve never had an issue eating chicken eggs with incomplete pigmentation.

4. Bumps on eggs

Bumps on your chicken eggs are calcium deposits – they can range from minor to large deposits, and they’re generally white.



The most common cause is excess calcium in your hen’s diet – check to see if she’s somehow getting too much calcium.

Other causes are defective shell glands or stress during the calcification process.

Can you eat it?
I’ve eaten these eggs without any issues.

5. Very Small Eggs

Lovingly referred to as fart eggs, rooster eggs or fairy eggs, very small eggs typically are missing the yolk. They’re cute to find, but don’t yield very much in the way of food.



Young pullets might produce fairy eggs when they first start laying – their reproductive system is just trying to catch up.

I’ve also had hens lay fairy eggs when under stress, notably with one hen that had been savaged by a rooster.

Her reproductive cycle might have been disturbed by the stress, or her body might not have been able to produce a real egg because it was putting its energy into healing her body.

Fairy eggs can also be laid when a foreign mass (such as a piece of tissue) triggers the hen’s system to produce an egg.

Can you eat it?
I’ve never had a problem eating fairy eggs.

6. Double Yolkers

Double yolkers are always exciting abnormal chicken eggs to find – they will have two yolks in one egg.



Double yolks happen when the hen releases two eggs into the oviduct, and both of those eggs are included in shell. 

Double yolk eggs generally are larger which can be a cause for concern if it’s too large for your hen to pass – causing her to become egg bound or suffer a vent prolapse. 

Although they put stress on a hen’s body, double yolks are becoming so desirable that industrial farmers have bred hens that will only produce double yolked eggs in Europe.

Generally speaking, there’s nothing wrong with a chicken that lays double yolked eggs – it’s just abnormal.

You can incubate it, and there are stories of twin chicks successfully hatching, although it’s rare.

Can you eat it?
People eat double yolked eggs daily.

7. White banded eggs

White banded eggs occur when two eggs enter the oviduct, thereby making contact with each other in the shell gland pouch.

When the hen is forming the shell of the first egg, the normal calcification process is interrupted, so it gets an extra layer of calcium – which is the white band marking. 

Causes for abnormal chicken eggs such as white banded eggs can be something simple, such as flock stress or something more serious such as an infection. 

Like always, your best bet is to watch your flock for abnormal behavior.

Can you eat it?

I’ve never had a problem eating white banded eggs.

8. Egg inside an egg

The fancy name for an egg inside an egg is counter-peristalsis contraction, but in every day terms, they’re eggs that somehow found themselves inside another egg.

It’s not common, but it does happen. 

It occurs when a hen releases a second egg into the oviduct before the first egg has completed the laying process. This causes the first egg to reverse in the oviduct, which is then added to the second egg.

The two then have a second albumen and shell form encasing both eggs.

You can see an egg inside an egg here:



Can you eat it?
Although I’ve not personally dealt with eggs inside eggs, I’ve read reports that they’re perfectly fine to eat. 

9. Speckled Eggs

Speckled eggs are pretty normal, as far as abnormal chicken eggs go. They look pretty, and it’s wonderful how unique eggs can be.



The speckles are actually extra calcium deposits, and are formed when the calcification process is disturbed or there’s a defective shell gland.

They can also be caused by an excess of calcium.

Although technically abnormal eggs, National Geographic studied eggs, and found that speckled eggs might be a way to make shells stronger – so your chicken might be on to something.

Can you eat it?
I’ve never had a problem eating a speckled egg – they just look abnormal.

10. Odd shaped eggs

Odd shaped eggs are pretty self explanatory – they’re abnormal chicken eggs that aren’t uniformly shaped all the way around.

They might have an abnormal look, like a bulge on one side, or a very pointy end, or just look lumpy.

Odd shaped eggs can occur if there’s some sort of abnormal disturbance in the egg forming process, or if your chicken experiences some sort of stress such as over crowding. Age also makes a difference – it can occur in very old or very young hens.

In rare cases, respiratory diseases can cause abnormal eggs. I had a reader tell me her hen always lays odd shaped eggs  – in this case, I would venture to say that since the hen lays consistently, it’s likely a structural issue internally.

Can you eat it?
I’ve not personally had any issues eating abnormal shaped chicken eggs.

While this list of isn’t comprehensive, I’ve touched on the 10 most common occurrences of abnormal chicken eggs. Hopefully you find it useful! 

Chickens can do tricks

Chicken Tricks and Training with Treats!

Posted by Andrea Martin / Mon, Nov 23, 2015
http://info.mannapro.com/homestead/chicken-tricks-with-chicken-treats

        

        First, A Bit of History Gallus g. domesticus. Those are our backyard chickens. Ever wonder just what was going on in those feathery little heads? Bird brains, indeed.