Odd Eggs

One of Benjamin’s jobs each day is to go out with a basket and gather eggs that the hens have laid.  It’s not a bad job.  When it rains though, the eggs get muddy from hens stepping in and out of the laying boxes and packaging them becomes a chore.  Normally we don’t clean them at all as washing them removes the “bloom” from the egg that is the natural protective covering that seals the pores in the egg against bacteria.  Washing the egg also reduces its shelf-life.

Sometimes we find odd eggs and just this week we’ve found a few.  First our pullets (young hens) have just started to lay.  Pullet eggs are smaller than eggs from hens that have laid for a while.  “Beginner eggs,” I guess while their bodies are getting used to laying.  We call them pullet bullets.  Here are two ‘pullet bullets’ (on the left) right next to a normal egg (on the right).

2 Pullet bullets on left - Regular egg on right

We eat them just the same, except we’ve noticed a difference.  The hens that are free-ranging on pasture are running all over 3 acres eating whatever looks appetizing to a hen.  The pullets, however, while on pasture, are confined to a 12 foot by 6 foot area of the tractor.   I set them free once they start laying.  Due to their confinement in the tractor, the yolks of their eggs aren’t as rich and dark orange as our free range hens as seen in the photo below.

Pastured egg (left) and pullet in chicken tractor egg (on right)

That dark orange color is due to diet.  Pastured eggs are so good for you as they are loaded with Omega-3 fatty acids, beta carotene, and vitamins A, D, and E.  I have to release the pullets so their eggs can get as beautiful and healthy.

Second strange egg.  The fart egg.  Weird!  The fart egg is a malfunction when something triggers the chicken’s egg-making parts to produce an egg.  The strange thing is, if you crack it, the shell and underlying membrane is very tough and there is no yolk inside.  It’s strictly a glitch in the system and can come from pullets or older hens.  Don’t worry chickens, we ALL make mistakes.  The fart egg is sitting on top of the opened egg carton in the photo below.

The "fart" egg

Finally, in bizarro egg world there is what we call the ‘Rubber Egg.’  Here is a picture of one:

The Rubber Egg

It looks normal enough, right?  But check this out:

A Soft Shell

It is like a water balloon.  You can press in on it with your thumb kind of like one of those stress reliever things.

There's a dent in the egg

I looked up rubber eggs to see what causes that and learned that they are caused by:

·         Young layers: Yep, we certainly have those.

·         Stress (being chased by children): Believe it or not we have that phenomenon as well,

·         Old layers: Don’t we all start falling apart a little bit as we age? 

·         Low calcium: the article said to not feed your hens swiss chard as it affects their ability to absorb calcium.  Believe it or not, I had just thrown some swiss chard to the hens!

I absolutely love soft-shelled crabs.  So we’ll consider Soft-shelled eggs to be a delicacy as well and happily gobble our hen’s regular eggs, pullet bullets, fart eggs or rubber eggs.  We’ll eat them fried in a cast iron skillet:

Fried Eggs

 Or scrambled with potatoes, peppers mushrooms and green onions:

Scrambled Eggs

But I WON’T eat GREEN EGGS.  Sorry Dr. Seuss. 

I do not like them Sam-I-am,

I do not like green eggs and ham.

The Dented Can

My Grandfather on my Mom's side (Poppy) owned and operated a small town family grocery store.  It was the type of store where "the regulars" came in for a free cup of Community Coffee Dark Roast in the morning.  It was a store where you could bring your homegrown cucumbers and Poppy would give you a fair price and sell them in the Produce Department.  They'd always sell out before the cukes that came from the warehouse!  It was also the type of store where bag boys carried out your sacks of groceries, put them in your car, thanked you and wished you a good day.

One thing I learned from having a grocery store in the family is that the customer always received only the best.  We weren't going to sell any dented cans.  Many times throughout the delivery process, unloading and stocking onto the shelves, canned goods got beat up and became dented and that was just unacceptable. You can't properly front and face a dented can.  It just couldn't be sold to the customer, so they always ended up in our house in the pantry.  As long as the seal wasn't broken, there was nothing wrong with the contents and we ate lots of beans and corn and soup that came from dented cans.  In fact, I was probably well into my teens when I became aware that there were actually canned goods WITHOUT dents in them.

Sometimes I think that many of us are like dented cans.  Our outsides are sort of dinged up and unattractive, but what's inside is good if we've been made new by the Blood of Christ:

1 Samuel 16:7

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

The Dented Can - Image Credit

Although we no longer have a family grocery store, the 'dented can' principle is still alive and kicking in our household - with eggs.  Benjamin's job is to gather eggs.  He uses the wire basket shown below to go to the chicken tractor, the egg boxes in the hen house, and the egg boxes in the barn to gather eggs each day.  Oh, he also checks the hiding places that a few hens like to lay their eggs in, like under the barn sink, or up in the hayloft, or behind the fan, or in the small barn in the corner, etc. etc.  Each day he'll come back to the house with a basket full.  The basket below averages 50 - 60 eggs.

Benjamin's basket of eggs

Now although an egg can't be dented (as far as I know), there are some eggs which are just not eggs that you sell to customers, friends and neighbors.  So Benjamin sorts them out. He'll pack customers' eggs in cartons, always trying to put at least one Aracauna egg in the carton as the blue or green egg offset against the brown eggs make for a really nice presentation.  Notice the customers' cartons loaded up with nice eggs, but also notice the carton in the back.

Eggs for the customers - Family eggs in the back

The carton in the back is the egg equivalent to the 'dented can' and is for the Sonnier Family consumption. Benjamin will sort out broken eggs like the one below.  Some get broken in the course of transit between the barn and the house.  If the membrane isn't broken, well, those get put in the family carton and we eat them. If it is broken, the dog gets to eat them. 

The broken 'dented can'

Other eggs are like the one below and are called "Fart Eggs."  I explained those in this post from last year and you can click on it to read the interesting story of the fart egg:  http://ourmakersacresfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/06/extra-small-egg.html  Well, fart eggs are perfectly fine to eat, but they are small.  Those get put in the family carton along with the broken ones.

The Fart Egg 'dented can'

Then there are the eggs that are just dirty.  Some eggs get dirty from muddy chicken feet climbing into and out of the nest.  Some eggs get dirty from, well, chicken poop. We'll wash some of it off, but we don't like to wash the eggs if at all possible.  When a hen lays an egg, she puts a coating on the egg called the 'bloom.' The bloom seals the porous egg and keeps bacteria out of it.  Washing the egg removes this protective coating and also allows the moisture in the egg to evaporate, thus reducing shelf life of the egg.  Excessively dirty eggs get washed but will go in the family carton with the broken eggs and fart eggs.

The dirty 'dented can'

There is one more egg that we don't sell to customers and I don't have a picture of it. I call them mystery eggs.  Remember when I told you about hens liking to hide their eggs?  Well, mystery eggs are those nests that we find in uncommon places and we don't know for sure if they are good or not.  Those definitely go in the family carton. These eggs are tested by floating them in water.  If they are rotten, they will float and those eggs get composted.  The eggs that pass the float test are cracked ONE AT A TIME (a lesson learned!) into a separate little bowl before we cook them. 

Looking at the family carton is sort of like the Island of Misfit Toys, but you know what?  Pastured eggs laid by free range hens roaming under blue skies and sunshine - eating bugs, worms, and who knows what else are delicious, regardless if they have a few 'dents' in them. 

Extra small egg

Gathering eggs is a fun thing to me.  It is Russ' daily job which will be assumed by Benjamin when Russ moves off to college.  Although fun to me, it probably isn't Russ' idea of entertainment.  I see it sort of like fishing.  You don't know how many you'll get, where you'll find them, or how many you'll get on any particular day.

A half dozen in one nest

We collect them in a wire basket as that lessens the likelihood of breakage, but let's be honest, we're dealing with eggs.  We experience breakage from time to time.  Sometimes we fall and break them, but most often the broken eggs are caused by nosy animals knocking over the basket or head-butting the basket. 


Egg Basket

Ever so often, we come across some oddities while collecting eggs.  The other day I showed you a soft egg that was weird.  Today we have another odd egg - a very, very small egg!  This happens ever so often.  The photo below shows the tiny chicken egg right next to a normal-sized egg, so you can see the scale.  The small egg is maybe an inch and an eighth long.

You'll notice it is an Aracauna egg.  These are the hens that lay blue and green eggs.  The small egg, however, has nothing to do with the breed as we've collected plenty of small brown eggs layed by Barred Rock hens and Rhode Island Red hens. 


Very small egg

Here is another one that I picked up on another day from a brown-egg layer that I've placed a penny beside it for perspective.  These are strange little boogers!


Little bitty egg

So what causes this?  Inquiring minds want to know!

This is actually called a "Fart Egg."  Not appetizing, I know.  They are also known as a "wind egg" if you want to be nice and proper.  Sometimes they are a pullet's first effort at egg laying.  In mature hens, they are caused when a piece of reproductive tissue inside the hen (the lining of the oviduct) breaks off and fools the glands that produce eggs.  The glands think that the mass of tissue is a yolk and starts forming an egg around it, wrapping it in albumen, membrane and shell!

The real question is, "Is a fart egg safe to eat?"  I think if you don't mind eating something called a fart egg, it is fine.  We eat ours.  There will be no yolk in the egg so it will be only the egg white.  These would be helpful in a recipe that calls for just egg whites.  You could save up a bunch of 'fart eggs' and save all kinds of time spent separating out the yolk!