Trusting Backyard Eggs

With the price of eggs doing some sort of strange limbo dance, we have seen the prevalence of more and more backyard farmers creating roadside stands with what we hope are farm fresh eggs. Can we be sure though? Trusting backyard eggs from strangers is something that many people choose to do on a daily basis, but do you really know your backyard farmer?

The life of a backyard produced chicken eggs depends greatly on how the egg was handled and stored. While we personally have chickens, I am very quick to list eggs that I have available either for hatching or for eating purposes quickly and make sure they fly right out the door (yes, maybe there was some pun intended here.)  We know that not all other backyard farmers feel this way though and while there are methods that the internet claims to be magic methods in telling if eggs are fresh or not ie; the float test, it is best to know exactly when the eggs were laid and how they were cared for after.

What to Know:

Were the eggs laid today or last week? It is hard when you have dozens of eggs being laid sometimes daily to keep track. The best way is a good old fashioned date stamp, or a marker for the cartons. We mark out the store date if using those cartons and write our own “laid on” date on the outside. This keeps the freshest eggs circulating at all times for our customers.

Another fun way to identify eggs is having your own egg stamp created. Of course you want to use a food safe ink, but this stamp identifies exactly where the eggs were purchased from and plus it adds a cute little marking for customers to find.

To Clean or Not to Clean?

Cleaning fresh eggs really depends a lot on the coop and the chickens. We use fresh shavings constantly and find that the eggs that are laid are not really that dirty most days, but occasionally we do get some pretty gross looking eggs. The really dirty ones are scrubbed and dried then placed in the cartons and into the fridge.

Note: when cleaning eggs do not use anything you would use to clean your dirty dishes with. We have a special egg scrubber that is just for the eggs and also use disposable paper towels, so I just wipe and toss immediately to avoid any confusion.

After your eggs have been cleaned, you can store them. You have 2 options here: you can either keep eggs in your fridge or leave them on your kitchen counter at room temperature.

Please note: you should store your eggs in the refrigerator straight away if you clean your eggs with water because you’ve removed the bloom from the eggs.

What Happens Next?

Once we have our eggs sorted and have them all marked and ready to sell personally I add a little post to Facebook so people know we have eggs and they typically set an appointment time to pick up. That way the eggs are not sitting outside for a long period of time, but should that not be the case we have a cooler that I pack with ice packs and towels to keep it cold but of course not cold enough to freeze the eggs. I put them in the cooler and we have a little area for the cash or people send us mobile payments for their eggs. Boom, done!

While I know that not everyone is as careful about their eggs as we are, its pretty safe to say that these days eggs aren’t sitting anywhere for too long because of the high demand. With proper advertising and community knowledge that you have the eggs people will come and buy them as quickly as you put them out in a lot of cases so buyers can rest assured that they are more than likely getting pretty fresh eggs.

For more information on backyard chickens and other food safety tips keep an eye on Make Food Safe for lots of handy information.