This article was originally a poster I made for 4H, but then I decided to make it into an article so others can enjoy it. It took a long time, but I finally finished, so here it is. I added in more information, and kept most of the old ideas too.
In this article I will be referring to eggs from the store as “store eggs,” and eggs from trusted farms and backyard chickens who get to roam outside “farm eggs”.
Note that when I say hens, I mean pullets and hens, and by layers I mean the same thing.
The 'Eggs'periment:
Hens and pullets add a protective layer, called the egg bloom to the shell. The egg bloom keeps bacteria out of the egg, preventing it from rotting for months. However, when an egg is washed, the egg bloom comes off, letting the eggs rot. I wanted to know how long it would take a washed egg to rot, so I did an experiment.
I washed two eggs, a store egg and a farm egg, on the same day. Then I let them sit around out of the fridge until they rotted. They took two weeks to rot, here is a picture of the first day they touched the surface:
Eggs on the day they rotted. Store egg on the left, farm egg on the right.
They both seemed to rot at the same speed, and it took exactly fourteen days.
Moral: Don’t wash your eggs. It takes off the egg bloom, causing them to rot faster. If you do wash them, keep them in the fridge. With the bloom on, eggs can last several weeks out of the fridge and months in the fridge.
Shell and Yolk
The color of the shell does not make any difference to the taste of the egg. It's just genetic.
The shell of store eggs is much thinner than the eggs from a hen with a good diet. Most hens who lay for stores do not have access to calcium, which causes their shells to be much thinner. You can make your chicken’s egg shells thicker by giving them oyster shells or dried egg shells.
(Fun fact: if you squeeze an egg, applying pressure to all sides evenly, the egg will not break, no matter how hard you squeeze due to the shape of the egg. However, if you press on only one side of the egg, it will break.)
Most farm eggs are deeper in color than store eggs, as you can see in the pictures.
Farm egg on the top, store egg on the bottom.
The color of the yolk depends on the pullet or hen’s diet. Generally speaking, the amount of greens the hen eats affects the yolk color. The more greens they eat, the deeper the color of the yolk (this means it contains more vitamin A and beta carotene).
Most people will agree that eggs from farm or backyard hens have much more taste than eggs from store-chickens. Also, just knowing that your eggs came from healthy, happy chickens can make breakfast taste much better!
Nutrition
It has been proven in more than one scientific study that eggs from free ranging hens are much more nutritious than from chickens contained indoors. Here are the reasons:
-Eggs at the store might be several months old when you buy them. Time does affect the nutrition of eggs; eggs are best when they are only a few weeks old.
-Health. The health of the layers will affect the nutrition of the egg probably more than anything else. If the chickens are sick or eating bad food, that goes into the eggs.
-Eggs from farm and backyard chickens have been proven to have less of the unwanted stuff and more of the good things like vitamins and beta carotene.
-Before eggs go on the shelves at the store, they have to be cleaned, and some company's idea of clean is not healthy. There won’t be any sawdust or feces on the eggs, but there might be chlorine and/or other chemicals that are not nutritious on the shell instead.
I am sure there are more reasons, but these are the most obvious ones.
(Fun fact: eggs have every vitamin except vitamin C!)
Types of Store Eggs
The labels on egg cartons can be misleading. Here is what they really mean:
1. Even if you don’t care for chickens, you have to sympathize for the caged chickens. Most 'caged' egg companies keep their layers in battery cages, which means they are kept in a cage with several other chickens with barely enough room to turn around, and the floor is slanted to make the eggs roll into the right places, but the slant is not good for the chickens' feet.
When a chicken dies, the body is removed as quickly as possible, but it might be awhile before the humans realize it is there, and the other chickens might have to sit with the possibly-diseased body for longer than is healthy.
They are fed pellets, which aren’t bad, but chickens should have more than just plain and boring pellets. Well, they aren't fed just pellets. They also have a lot of antibiotics, chemicals, and other things that are not healthy (but if they are fed antibiotics there is a waiting period before their eggs can be sold again at stores). Chickens should have bugs and greens too. (Here is a good article about it: Feeding Chickens - An Introductory Guide)
Kept in tight spaces like battery cages, diseases can travel very fast from one chicken to the next. Even if the antibiotics try to prevent illnesses, nothing is perfect. And even without diseases, do you really want to eat eggs from chickens kept in these circumstances? After all, some of this unhealthiness has to go into the eggs.
2. Cage free does not mean chickens run around in a sunny meadow with grass and flowers in every direction. Really, cage free birds shove around in a large barn with thousands of other chickens, and there is about one square foot of space per bird, which is better than caged chickens but still not the best.
Cage free birds are more likely to pick on each other, and the air is normally very bad inside the barn.
3. To hold the title free range, the chickens have to have the chance to be outside. You may think this is very good, but there are no rules for this, and most “free range” chickens could have anything from a normal run on dirt to a tiny pen on concrete. The conditions could be just as crowded and miserable as cage free chickens, except that the free range chickens have the chance to get a bit of fresh air during the day.
4. Organic chickens must have access to the outdoors and have a special diet--organic feed and absolutely no pesticides of any sort on their food from the time they are chicks. They also can’t be treated antibiotics of any sort. This is a very good option.
Organic chickens in the US are checked in often by USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), so there can be no cheats there.
5. Pastured chickens should be where the sunny meadow with flowers comes in, and it is in some places. However, there are no terms or rules for pastured birds at all, and not all people are honest. This is one of the best choices if it is a trustworthy company.
Some companies let their chickens run loose in a meadow while others put them in good sized runs that are moved every few hours.
I made a thread about what types of eggs everybody likes best (What type of eggs do you like best?). The majority voted for pastured eggs, but the vote is still open, so it may change.
Now that you have read this article, consider getting your own chickens if you don’t have them already, or perhaps upgrade from buying eggs from caged chickens to organic or pastured chickens.
In this article I will be referring to eggs from the store as “store eggs,” and eggs from trusted farms and backyard chickens who get to roam outside “farm eggs”.
Note that when I say hens, I mean pullets and hens, and by layers I mean the same thing.
The 'Eggs'periment:
Hens and pullets add a protective layer, called the egg bloom to the shell. The egg bloom keeps bacteria out of the egg, preventing it from rotting for months. However, when an egg is washed, the egg bloom comes off, letting the eggs rot. I wanted to know how long it would take a washed egg to rot, so I did an experiment.
I washed two eggs, a store egg and a farm egg, on the same day. Then I let them sit around out of the fridge until they rotted. They took two weeks to rot, here is a picture of the first day they touched the surface:
Eggs on the day they rotted. Store egg on the left, farm egg on the right.
They both seemed to rot at the same speed, and it took exactly fourteen days.
Moral: Don’t wash your eggs. It takes off the egg bloom, causing them to rot faster. If you do wash them, keep them in the fridge. With the bloom on, eggs can last several weeks out of the fridge and months in the fridge.
Shell and Yolk
The color of the shell does not make any difference to the taste of the egg. It's just genetic.
The shell of store eggs is much thinner than the eggs from a hen with a good diet. Most hens who lay for stores do not have access to calcium, which causes their shells to be much thinner. You can make your chicken’s egg shells thicker by giving them oyster shells or dried egg shells.
(Fun fact: if you squeeze an egg, applying pressure to all sides evenly, the egg will not break, no matter how hard you squeeze due to the shape of the egg. However, if you press on only one side of the egg, it will break.)
Most farm eggs are deeper in color than store eggs, as you can see in the pictures.
Farm egg on the top, store egg on the bottom.
The color of the yolk depends on the pullet or hen’s diet. Generally speaking, the amount of greens the hen eats affects the yolk color. The more greens they eat, the deeper the color of the yolk (this means it contains more vitamin A and beta carotene).
Most people will agree that eggs from farm or backyard hens have much more taste than eggs from store-chickens. Also, just knowing that your eggs came from healthy, happy chickens can make breakfast taste much better!
Nutrition
It has been proven in more than one scientific study that eggs from free ranging hens are much more nutritious than from chickens contained indoors. Here are the reasons:
-Eggs at the store might be several months old when you buy them. Time does affect the nutrition of eggs; eggs are best when they are only a few weeks old.
-Health. The health of the layers will affect the nutrition of the egg probably more than anything else. If the chickens are sick or eating bad food, that goes into the eggs.
-Eggs from farm and backyard chickens have been proven to have less of the unwanted stuff and more of the good things like vitamins and beta carotene.
-Before eggs go on the shelves at the store, they have to be cleaned, and some company's idea of clean is not healthy. There won’t be any sawdust or feces on the eggs, but there might be chlorine and/or other chemicals that are not nutritious on the shell instead.
I am sure there are more reasons, but these are the most obvious ones.
(Fun fact: eggs have every vitamin except vitamin C!)
Types of Store Eggs
The labels on egg cartons can be misleading. Here is what they really mean:
1. Even if you don’t care for chickens, you have to sympathize for the caged chickens. Most 'caged' egg companies keep their layers in battery cages, which means they are kept in a cage with several other chickens with barely enough room to turn around, and the floor is slanted to make the eggs roll into the right places, but the slant is not good for the chickens' feet.
When a chicken dies, the body is removed as quickly as possible, but it might be awhile before the humans realize it is there, and the other chickens might have to sit with the possibly-diseased body for longer than is healthy.
They are fed pellets, which aren’t bad, but chickens should have more than just plain and boring pellets. Well, they aren't fed just pellets. They also have a lot of antibiotics, chemicals, and other things that are not healthy (but if they are fed antibiotics there is a waiting period before their eggs can be sold again at stores). Chickens should have bugs and greens too. (Here is a good article about it: Feeding Chickens - An Introductory Guide)
Kept in tight spaces like battery cages, diseases can travel very fast from one chicken to the next. Even if the antibiotics try to prevent illnesses, nothing is perfect. And even without diseases, do you really want to eat eggs from chickens kept in these circumstances? After all, some of this unhealthiness has to go into the eggs.
2. Cage free does not mean chickens run around in a sunny meadow with grass and flowers in every direction. Really, cage free birds shove around in a large barn with thousands of other chickens, and there is about one square foot of space per bird, which is better than caged chickens but still not the best.
Cage free birds are more likely to pick on each other, and the air is normally very bad inside the barn.
3. To hold the title free range, the chickens have to have the chance to be outside. You may think this is very good, but there are no rules for this, and most “free range” chickens could have anything from a normal run on dirt to a tiny pen on concrete. The conditions could be just as crowded and miserable as cage free chickens, except that the free range chickens have the chance to get a bit of fresh air during the day.
4. Organic chickens must have access to the outdoors and have a special diet--organic feed and absolutely no pesticides of any sort on their food from the time they are chicks. They also can’t be treated antibiotics of any sort. This is a very good option.
Organic chickens in the US are checked in often by USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), so there can be no cheats there.
5. Pastured chickens should be where the sunny meadow with flowers comes in, and it is in some places. However, there are no terms or rules for pastured birds at all, and not all people are honest. This is one of the best choices if it is a trustworthy company.
Some companies let their chickens run loose in a meadow while others put them in good sized runs that are moved every few hours.
I made a thread about what types of eggs everybody likes best (What type of eggs do you like best?). The majority voted for pastured eggs, but the vote is still open, so it may change.
Now that you have read this article, consider getting your own chickens if you don’t have them already, or perhaps upgrade from buying eggs from caged chickens to organic or pastured chickens.
