3 years ago

pioneermountainhomestead eggs farmfresh food preservation frozen food

Too Many Eggs?
If you have chickens, you know how the eggs start to pile up in the spring and summer. Then when winter comes and the girls stop laying, you are left with no eggs. Well, here’s something that might help you.

Over the spring and summer when we have extra eggs that cannot be sold, we freeze the extra. Here’s how we do it:

1. Crack open the eggs.

2. Scramble the eggs (we do not recommend freezing them whole).

3. Place one egg’s worth of liquid in each pocket of your silicone tray.

4. Freeze the eggs.

5. Pop the eggs from the silicone tray.

6. Store eggs in a freezer bag. One frozen disc will equal one egg.

7. Thaw before using.

We have done this with chicken and with duck eggs.

Why do chickens stop laying eggs?

For our followers that don’t raise chickens, you may not realize that chickens do not lay eggs (or lay a reduced amount of eggs) in the winter. The reason is that chickens lay eggs primarily based on daylight hours. The spring, summer, and early fall seasons have more daylight hours than the winter. It is estimated that a chicken needs about 14 hours of daylight to produce eggs.

Some farmers will add artificial light to increase egg production in the winter. At our farm, we currently do not add additional light for two reasons. First, to light an area costs money and the margins on eggs are not significant enough for us to justify lighting at the current time. Second, we feel that giving the chickens a break is needed for their health. We can’t back this with science, but hey, we all need a small break once in a while!

Why can’t you sell the extra eggs?

As a small egg processor in the State of Pennsylvania, we are required to follow the State Code when selling eggs from the farm. This includes rules on the number of hens we keep, the radius of our market, and the number of days we have to sell the eggs.

Eggs have a shelf life that exceeds the number of days we have to sell the eggs, so if we didn’t sell our eggs in the time allotted, they are no longer “salable” eggs to the public. These “old” eggs serve no other purpose on the market and therefore either get used by us or fed to the animals (ask our farm dogs and stray cats who hope we never sell another egg! They love them! Ha ha).

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