Our chickens pretty much have free range of our farm and sleep in the barn with the sheep. Most days turns into a Easter egg hunt finding their eggs. Usually they lay their eggs in one spot. We've been getting 6-8 per day. Sometimes, they are quite dirty. People who work with my husband myself fight over the eggs. I want to start selling them and they will pay us. My question is how do you wash them? I don't wash if they are clean looking and tell people they haven't been washed. However, I have a hard time giving/selling people really dirty eggs. I tried vinegar water and the vinegar streaked the brown in the eggs.
Thanks for your help.
Washing Eggs?
Don't put eggs under water. Just clean with damp cloth. Most of time when eggs look clean, I don't wash them. Only eggs look dirty, I use damp cloth clean it off.
I wash my *dirty* eggs with cool water, a tiny drop of dawn dish soap and I use one of those green scrubbies to get off the stubborn bits....then rinse well. I never let the eggs sit in water.
When I first learned how to collect and wash eggs, my teacher was horrified when I ran a sink full of hot water and a bit of bleach. She wanted to know who'd eat boiled eggs that tasted like bleach, lol.
I immerse them in warmish water and rinse. Gently scrub off any poopy parts with a soft surgeon scrub. Never had a problem.
Jewel -
Question number one would be this: are you planning on selling your eggs as fertile eggs for people to incubate and hatch, or selling them to eat? If you are doing the latter, then you can do any of the above mentioned cleaning methods. If you are selling the eggs as fertile eggs, then you don't need to touch them unless you have to. If they are terribly poopy, take a warm, damp rag and gently scrub them clean. People who incubate eggs, expect the eggs to be a bit dirty and don't think a thing about it. Best of luck to you.
Belinda
Jewel, I agree. We usually keep the poopier ones for ourselves and just rinse them off and crack them not where the poop is ( if there are any stubborn bits). I think that washing them removed a protective coating, am I right? So you want to eat them more quickly if you do that.
It depends on how you wash them. Gently rinsing is not going to do any harm. Eggs in the wild are exposed to a good amount of moisture now and then.
I have been selling eggs for at least 10 years. The accepted way to clean them is with water warmer than the egg to keep the egg from drawing in the germs. I use a kitchen sponge to remove heavy stains. I let the eggs dry on a clean towel then package them. I have a small egg scale to determine size of egg. Eggs for hatching are not washed. I just make sure the nest boxes are filled with clean shavings and pick only clean large eggs to hatch.
Linda
Right, Zeppy. I was more thinking about vinegar or cleaning agents.
Yikes, yeah. Someone washes my eggs in bleach or detergent and *I* wouldn't eat 'em. :)
If hens are discouraged from sleeping in the nesting boxes, the eggs are usually very clean.
Zeppy,
BackyardHen has the right answers and she nows the best things about cleaning
eggs if not bleach or detergent use a wash cloth and a little soap. It will not heart them eggs I would eat them... Tracey
I can remember asking the same question here at DG a little over a year ago. LOL.
I tried several different ways as per several different suggestions. I always felt "funny" about the germs on eggs. So, finally I settled on a way I felt most comfortable with. Mostly a combination of the ideas I've learned here.
I have a plastic bowl that I use for only washing eggs. I put a couple drops of dish liquid soap and a couple drops of bleach in it and run full of comfortably warm water. I put the eggs in and wash (immediately) each one with a little scrubby fingernail type brush, rinse and place on a towel to dry. Then into the fridge they go.
This way I feel like I'm not handling something dirty while trying to cook, and they seem to keep fresh for a very long time..
Thanks to all of you who helped me learn. Been a healthy way to do it so far.