FRESH eggs??

[Bird]

I can meet you in Waco and we can make the exchange.

I appreciate the offer, but 250+ miles round trip is a bit far to drive for eggs.:laughing:

 

[randy41]

blood spots in eggs are from broken blood vessels and have nothing to do with the rooster. the freshness of the eggs also has alot to do with the color.

 

[LJH]

I'm completely spoiled since I get my eggs from neighbors who free-range their birds and supplement with organic feed. If I can't get these local, super-fresh eggs for some reason I just go without. Same for chicken meat; the flavor, nutrition and if you care about that kind of stuff (I do), the humane treatment of the birds. No supermarket eggs or chicken for us.

Next year I should have my coop done and will have my own - fingers crossed.

 

[Scooby074]

My girls lay the best eggs. There really is a difference between store bought and home grown.

 

[dave1949]

Brown eggs from the grocery store have the red-brownish fleck in the yolk, but white eggs from the store do not. I think that spot in the yolk has more to do with the chicken breed than fertile or not. Brown eggs cost more but supposedly it is a myth that brown eggs are more nutritious or better in some way than white eggs.

I think commercial egg farms can and do make the yoke and white look more like a free range chicken with feed additives. To me the difference is more in the taste of the eggs.

 

[Marveltone]

Our chickens free range throughout the spring, summer and fall. The eggs during that time are indeed deeper colored and tastier. A few months ago we traded a dozen eggs for some bread from a woman in town. She told us that she fried some up the next day, and her 9 year old son asked, "Mom! Where did you get these eggs? They're awesome!"

Her bread was pretty awesome, too!

Joe

 

[Bird]

Brown eggs from the grocery store have the red-brownish fleck in the yolk, but white eggs from the store do not. I think that spot in the yolk has more to do with the chicken breed than fertile or not. Brown eggs cost more but supposedly it is a myth that brown eggs are more nutritious or better in some way than white eggs.

I think commercial egg farms can and do make the yoke and white look more like a free range chicken with feed additives. To me the difference is more in the taste of the eggs.

Many years ago (1940s & early '50s at least) the U.S. Post Office delivered a lot of baby chicks. And if they could not be promptly delivered, the local postmaster was authorized to sell them cheap before they died. So my Dad and Granddad got baby chicks every year that way. So that meant we got different chicken breeds at times. Dad's first choice for laying hens was White Leghorns, but some years we had Dominecker, Rhode Island Red, etc. So most of the time we had white eggs, but sometimes we had brown ones. I wouldn't pay any more for brown ones, but I'd just as soon have them.

My parents moved from Ardmore, OK, to Baltimore, MD, when I was a baby and Dad took a job with the Social Security Administration. They did not like city living in Baltimore and after a couple of years, moved back to Oklahoma. But they had lots of stories of apartment dwelling city folks in Baltimore who had never been on a farm. One of the stories was about a vendor who came around with a push cart selling vegetables, eggs, and such. Mother said whichever of the women in the building first saw the vendor would go knock on other doors to tell them he was out there. So one day, a neighbor lady knocked on the door and told Mother the vendor was out there "and he has a good price on eggs today, but make him let you pick out your own because some of them are so old they've turned brown."

 

[OldMcDonald]

We let all our chickens free range. The yolks are deep orange and much better tasting than commercial layer houses where the chickens eat pelletized feed and stay under lights 24 hours a day just to lay them selves out in about 12 months.
.

Unfortunately this is only one of several incorrect statements in this thread. Laying hens are never, ever, on 24 hours a day lighting. They would stop laying. Most housed birds are on about 16 hours on and 8 off. It is a legal requirement in most of the world for adult stock to have a minimum dark period of 7 hours in 24. Some folks have experimented with 8 on and 8 off. Only possible if the house is light proof. I am not convinced it produces more eggs.

I have kept commercial flocks of laying hens in several countries over the last 60 years so speak from a wee bit of experience. Whenever possible, including on my previous farm in the North of Scotland where eggs were my sole source of income, I have free ranged the hens. The yolk colour is purely due to the feed consumed. I had sufficient numbers that the feed mill made my feed to order. There is a yolk colour indicator that Roche used to make. I understand they stopped production soon after the turn of the century. This indicator was coloured strips of plastic numbered from 1 to 15 if I remember correctly, 1 being very anaemic looking and the top end verging on blood red. In Inverness and further north they only wanted eggs with a yolk colour right at the top end. My feed was made to provide that colour. Maize (corn in the US) will give a good yellow colour, but not the reddish tints that many people look for. Marigold petals and some other plants will help, but food colouring materials are what is needed to move the colour towards the red end. Some green feeds will give a greenish tint to the white, and sometimes an "off" smell. The age of the hen that laid the egg has a great deal to do with the consistency of the white part, known as the albumen. A young hen will produce an egg with a tight albumen if the egg is broken into a pan, whilst the older the hen becomes, the more the albumen will tend to spread. The weather also is involved. In really hot temperatueres when the hen drinks more, the albumen tends to become thinner. This can happen in housed flocks if the ventilation is not sufficient to keep the temperature down.

As already pointed out, blood spots have nothing to do with whether the egg is fertile or not. In fact, a bloodspot is not wanted in a hatching egg.

Cockerels are not necessary for egg production, and they are never used in commercial flocks. Cockerels are sex machines on legs and will, as Gary Fowler says, rape the hens until they cause physical damage. A hen with no feathers due to treading has been treated most cruelly, and I would not want to be the owner of such birds. Almost every female in the animal kingdom produces eggs on a regular basis up to a certain age. Ask your wife/girlfriend. Hens have been bred to produce more frequently than most species.

I do not know what the regulations are regarding when eggs are deemed to be past their "use by" date, but in much of the world it is 28 days after laying. They will keep much longer than that if not subjected to high temperatures. A cool pantry is ideal, despite instruction that they should be refrigerated. In Europe that is a stupid suggestion, because the producer is banned from refrigerating the eggs, as is the retailer, yet the consumer is recommended to keep them in the fridge.

 

[ultrarunner]

Friends in Europe sold eggs to the coop... they kept them in a walk out cellar... even though it was not refrigerated... it was a consistent 55 F

 

[blueriver]

Many years ago (1940s & early '50s at least) the U.S. Post Office delivered a lot of baby chicks. And if they could not be promptly delivered, the local postmaster was authorized to sell them cheap before they died. So my Dad and Granddad got baby chicks every year that way. So that meant we got different chicken breeds at times. Dad's first choice for laying hens was White Leghorns, but some years we had Dominecker, Rhode Island Red, etc. So most of the time we had white eggs, but sometimes we had brown ones. I wouldn't pay any more for brown ones, but I'd just as soon have them. My parents moved from Ardmore, OK, to Baltimore, MD, when I was a baby and Dad took a job with the Social Security Administration. They did not like city living in Baltimore and after a couple of years, moved back to Oklahoma. But they had lots of stories of apartment dwelling city folks in Baltimore who had never been on a farm. One of the stories was about a vendor who came around with a push cart selling vegetables, eggs, and such. Mother said whichever of the women in the building first saw the vendor would go knock on other doors to tell them he was out there. So one day, a neighbor lady knocked on the door and told Mother the vendor was out there "and he has a good price on eggs today, but make him let you pick out your own because some of them are so old they've turned brown."

That right there is down right funny .. "Turned Brown" !!! I still get chicks thru the USPS !!!