Eggs - how to keep

[Happy hen lover]

Hey I was a homesteader from Canada that coats her fresh eggs with mineral oil? @aart or anyone else have you heard of this?

 

[aart]

@aart or anyone else have you heard of this?

Yep, have heard of it...don't know anything about it really.

 

[saysfaa]

Yes. I've that more often than all other ways of sealing the pores of the egg except water glassing.

Mineral oil and beeswax did better than aloe, gelatin, and control of no coating in this study in which microbiological analysis showed that all coated and uncoated eggs were microbiologically safe throughout the storage period of six weeks at 30 C.

I didn't see whether they started with washed eggs or not. Oh. They "wiped with steel wool to clean any possible dirt on the shell"

There are a few other coatings that have been tested, at least, although not used much. Quite a bit of the interest is in countries like Nigeria - hot climate and no reliable refrigeration in parts of it.

They said they were looking for alternatives to mineral oil because mineral oil dries so slowly

 

[Happy hen lover]

Yes. I've that more often than all other ways of sealing the pores of the egg except water glassing.

Mineral oil and beeswax did better than aloe, gelatin, and control of no coating in this study in which microbiological analysis showed that all coated and uncoated eggs were microbiologically safe throughout the storage period of six weeks at 30 C.

I didn't see whether they started with washed eggs or not. Oh. They "wiped with steel wool to clean any possible dirt on the shell"

There are a few other coatings that have been tested, at least, although not used much. Quite a bit of the interest is in countries like Nigeria - hot climate and no reliable refrigeration in parts of it.

They said they were looking for alternatives to mineral oil because mineral oil dries so slowly

Thank you for this I may do my own control here at home.

 

[ndcallahan]

people don’t mind non washed poopy eggs? I feel like they would care

 

[saysfaa]

people don’t mind non washed poopy eggs? I feel like they would care

Here are what my eggs look like before they are washed. All but three have been this clean without washing them.

If many eggs were poopy, I'd change my management of the flock. I might not (if it ever happens) if my first flock didn't normally have clean feet and nonpoopy eggs because most of my friends that had chickens thought that was normal. I might not have realized it wasn't normal.

Or do you mean they must be poopy because eggs and poop both exit through the vent? That is perception much more tgan reality. They do share the vent and cloaca. The cloaca is the last section of the oviduct and of the digestive tract. It is only about 12 cm long and is quite complex. It has two mucosal folds dividing it into three chambers. These allow it to shift in shape depending on what bodily function is using the vent. When an egg is being laid, the poop tract is sealed by the folds themselves and lubricants. And vice versa. If anyone wants more details, some of the words to search for are coprodeum, urodeum, and proctodeum.

 

[CKfarm22]

<shrugs>I don't see the point in floating the 2 for breakfast.
Just break them in a bowl and use your eyes, nose, and common sense to decide if egg is OK to eat.
Try it, see if you've been tossing perfectly edible eggs.

That’s literally what they said. “I don’t see the point to float testing ALL the eggs if you only want 2 for breakfast”

 

[aart]

That’s literally what they said. “I don’t see the point to float testing ALL the eggs if you only want 2 for breakfast”

I see no reason to float any eggs.

 

[saysfaa]

Water glassing? Or liming? They are different. The liming seems to be the better choice. I have a few dozen eggs in lime solutions to see how it goes.

It did not go as well as I hoped. They are safe to eat - no problem with how they smell or look. I ate them in muffins first and couldn't tell a difference from fresh eggs. These are eggs stored at room temperature in the pickling lime solution for 4 to 5 months.

Then I tried boiling them and making egg salad. Again, no problem with how they smell. They looked a little different - color was really good but something about them was odd. I'm not even sure what, it was pretty subtle, besides the yolks being nearly at the shell instead of more evenly surrounded by the white. I ate five over an afternoon and had no noticeable health effects - it was three or four days ago so they would have shown up if they were going to, I think. They tasted like any other eggs. I found the texture or mouth feel or such, quite off-putting. There was no definition - it was like eating pudding. I like pudding but not when it is supposed to be egg.

Next year, I think I will store only enough for baking.

For what it is worth - I started with following the recipe I found but that was far, far, far too much lime. I diluted it until I could see a little lime after it had time to settle - enough to know the solution was saturated and just a little extra to allow for different temperatures. It was maybe an eighth as much as the recipe called for. Maybe less than an eighth.

 

[saysfaa]

Well, this is interesting.
Instead of looking for changes in nutrients, I tried to find what researchers and the USDA did research. Then I started finding more.

"Haugh unit" (pronounced how unit) is a measure of the albumen height. It turns out there are lots of factors that affect that besides storage time. Age of hen, strain of the hen (white eggs vary less than brown eggs) heat stress on the hens, whether they stop laying for a time, how quickly they are cooled and how to what temperature they are cooled, whether they are oiled, ...

Vitelline membrane becomes less elastic over time. Then customers get more broken yolks when they crack their eggs. The study I found that concluded with, "...The results indicated that although the physical quality factors monitored in this study decreased during storage, egg quality was still acceptable beyond current recommended shelf life guidelines."

Ah, another study explained the veteline membrane is important because the yolk contains the nutrients needed for bacterial growth. If the veteline membrane isn't intact then the contents of the yolk diffuse into the whites with bad results. So, (my conclusion) is if you store an egg where it doesn't get jostled and leave it alone until you use it, you can safely store it longer than it you shift it around gently. And much longer than if you move it abruptly.

The pH inside the egg changes over time - no study yet that says so but that should affect how well various microbes can grow. If they did get past the bloom.

Edit to add
The yolk membrane elasticity decreases with the age of the hen also.

And

It did not go as well as I hoped. They are safe to eat - no problem with how they smell or look. I ate them in muffins first and couldn't tell a difference from fresh eggs. These are eggs stored at room temperature in the pickling lime solution for 4 to 5 months.

Then I tried boiling them and making egg salad. Again, no problem with how they smell. They looked a little different - color was really good but something about them was odd. I'm not even sure what, it was pretty subtle, besides the yolks being nearly at the shell instead of more evenly surrounded by the white. I ate five over an afternoon and had no noticeable health effects - it was three or four days ago so they would have shown up if they were going to, I think. They tasted like any other eggs. I found the texture or mouth feel or such, quite off-putting. There was no definition - it was like eating pudding. I like pudding but not when it is supposed to be egg.

Next year, ...

I opened the last jar that was done at the same time and in the same way as the above. So it was a couple of months oldèr than 2 years. The eggs smelled fine, they looked fine when cracked open - yolk was separate from the white, color of each was good, no signs off any problems. When I threw them into a field, the yolk and white did not hold separate as much as a fresh egg would have (a very subjective observation).

I did not eat them. I would have tried eating them based on how their look and smell compared to the earlier ones. But I found them behind other stuff on the bottom shelf in the basement while moving. I didn't have time to dink around with anything nonessential.

I didn't end up preserving more the next year. We just don't eat enough eggs for storage to be an issue.