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A Whole Chapter on Egg QualityTo get the old-fashioned point of view, click here to read Chapter 11, "Quality in Eggs" from our book, "The Dollar Hen." This is from 1909, but it still lays out the problems clearly. Makes me glad we all have refrigerators these days!Read the USDA Egg Grading ManualClick here to read the USDA's 56-page Egg Grading Manual. Not light reading, but very thorough.Frequently Asked Questions1. I'm getting shell-less eggs. What do I do?This may be related to a lack of calcium or vitamin D, but you get some shell-less eggs (held together by the membranes alone) in any sizable flock. Hens synthesize vitamin D from sunlight, just as humans do, and it doesn't take much. Hens on range won't have vitamin D deficiencies if they're really going outdoors. Otherwise, though, natural feeds are deficient in vitamin D. Balanced rations add vitamin D, often in the form of fish oil.Eggshells require a lot of calcium. I recommend that every flock be provided with a feeder full of ground oystershells (available at any feed store). Do this even if you're feeding a balanced laying diet. This allows hens to eat something other than the layer diet (such as bugs or grain), and still get the calcium they need. Hens have an accurate calcium appetite. Feed-grade limestone also works, but in single-sack quantities the price
difference isn't enough to worry about, and the hens prefer oystershell.
2. How do I prevent dirty eggs?It's typical for about 30% of your eggs to be dirty when collected. Washing eggs is tedious, so it helps if you prevent as many dirty eggs as possible. Sources of dirty eggs are:Hens who sleep and poop in the nest boxes. Chickens want to sleep at the highest point available, so make sure your roosts are higher than your nest boxes. That can save you a lot of trouble. Once you've dealt with that, hens who stay in the nest box at night are probably broody. They should be kept in a broody coop (a cage with a wire floor) for three or four days. A broody coop is so unlike a nest that it tends to cure them of their desire to sit on the nest with a clutch of eggs. Give them food and water or they'll go into a molt. Hens who enter the nests with muddy feet. This is especially troublesome for hens with outdoor access. If there's a broad stretch of litter (straw or wood shavings) on the floor between the henhouse door and the nest boxes, their feet will be less muddy. Also, if you arrange it so they have to walk across a shallow tray filled with powdered gypsum, powdered limestone (not hydrated lime or quicklime -- these are caustic!) or diatomaceous earth before entering the nest boxes, their feet will get coated with powder and won't leave marks on the eggs. Replacing the perches on the nest boxes with trays about four inches wide will work. Broken Eggs. Nests with insufficient nest litter or with too many hens jammed in at once will have broken eggs, which are not only lost themselves, but add a messy, hard-to-clean coating on other eggs. I think that nests that are unusually wide and have unusually deep litter work very well. I removed half of the partitions from a pair of 8' nest boxes, leaving them with holes two feet wide instead of one foot wide, and this worked very well. If the front boards on nest boxes are 6-8" high instead of the traditional 4" high, you can pile in a lot more litter. If you use relatively heavy litter such as straw or wood chips, the hens don't scratch it all out of the box as quickly as wood shavings. Traffic. Every time a hen enters the nest box or moves around
while inside, there's a chance of an egg breaking. Darkening the
nests makes the hens less active. Turning the nest boxes around to face
the wall or darkening the front with flaps of plastic tarp work very well.
Using community nests or tunnel nests also works very well.
3. How do I wash dirty eggs?Dry Cleaning. Washing eggs in water is a lot more complicated than dry cleaning with abrasives, so we'll talk about abrasives first. You can clean up lightly soiled eggs with various abrasives. Sanding sponges from 3M and others are good, and can be found in any hardware store. Loofas are also good. Some people use sandpaper or steel wool, but these aren't as good as the first two. Basically, you rub the egg until it's clean, or you give up, or it breaks in your hand. This happens more often than you'd think, because dirty eggs are often cracked as well. Dry cleaning doesn't work very well to clean up eggs that have been smeared with the white or yolk of broken eggs in the nest. Whatever tools you use to clean the eggs, it's best to wash and sanitize it from time to time. Clean loofas or sanding sponges in soap and water, sanitize them in water with a little bit of bleach, then allow to dry. These methods of cleaning are very slow and tedious. They are suitable for small flocks, but when you have significant numbers of eggs to sell, the labor involved in cleaning the dirty ones can become a big barrier to success and satisfaction. If you want to have a small commercial flock on your farm, you will almost certainly want to look into wet cleaning. Wet cleaning is more complicated. The basic issue is that dirty eggs are covered with bacteria, which have trouble getting through the shell so long as it's dry. As soon as the shell is wet, they pass through the shell more easily. Also, if you cool the egg, the contents shrink a little, causing a partial vacuum inside that tends to suck foreign matter into the egg. The upshot is that you should always wash eggs in water that's warmer than the egg is, and you should sanitize the eggshells to kill any bacteria on the shell. Immersion WashersEgg washing is a mature technology. The issues have been understood since the Thirties. However, early egg-washing machinery ran afoul of human nature. The old immersion-style washers worked superbly when run according to the instructions, especially if the water was replaced between each basket of eggs. But human nature is such that people can't resist running "just one more basket" through the washer. Sanitizers are ineffective when used in dirty water, and eggs washed in dirty water spoil quickly. This sort of thing has given egg-washing a bad reputation, even though sanitary egg washers that don't have any of the problems of the old immersion washers have been around for over forty years, and proper egg-washing technique has been well-known for over sixty years. Wet cleaning is actually illegal in some areas (like the EU), though not in the U.S. In fact, if your eggs are USDA-inspected, it's mandatory to wash and sanitize them! The USDA does not allow immersion washers for eggs under their inspection. Many states repeat the USDA rules verbatim. Others, such as Oregon, are more forgiving. In any event, you don't have to use immersion washers. The method I give below for hand-washing eggs works better than immersion washers, and doesn't violate any USDA rules. It's suitable for kitchen-sink egg-washing. The Aquamagic (Sani-Touch) Egg WasherThe best way of washing eggs is with an AquaMagic candler/washer/dryer/grader machine. Everyone I know with a farm flock bigger than 200 hens considers these machines indispensible. These are expensive, with simple washer/dryer models starting at around $6,000 new, but they have been in continuous production for around 40 years, so old ones can sometimes be found for between $100 and $2,000 by putting an ad in you regional farm newspaper. Beware, though, that such units are often decrepit. The machines are complex and are hard to figure out if more than one thing is broken. Washing Eggs By HandHere's an egg-washing technique that ought to be acceptable everywhere, even by the strict USDA standards (but I haven't checked it with them):
Hot Water as a SanitizerAn even simpler method of egg washing is as follows: Fill a metal bucket with 160F (70 C) water and a little unscented dishwasher detergent. This water is hot enough to scald you, so be careful. Slowly pour the water over a basket full of eggs, allowing the water to go down the drain. Don't let the eggs stand in the water or they'll cook (not to mention that allowing eggs to stand in water violates the rules of the USDA and many states). That's it. The water is hot enough to sanitize the eggshells without added chemicals. This method doesn't work as well as one where the eggs are wiped, such as in the Aquamagic (using rotating brushes) or the watering-can technique (wiping by hand with paper towels), but it ought to be okay on eggs that are only lightly soiled. It's certainly simple, provided you have an adequate supply of very hot water. CAUTION: 160F water is hot enough to scald you, and pouring a bucketful over yourself is not an experience you'll forget in a hurry.
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