Duck eggs -- or fresh farm eggs in general -- and refrigeration

[JoZ]

Hi COTH farm folk,

I visited friends yesterday and was given two big beautiful duck eggs. I’m looking forward to doing something with them, maybe scrambles for dinner tonight! However…

I forgot them in my truck when I got home last night – and didn’t think of it till I had left for work this morning (sans truck). So they will be out until I get home tonight. It probably won’t get above 52-55 degrees today and not sunny; will they be OK?

I dimly remember something about fresh eggs and refrigeration, along the lines of it not being necessary. But when you half-remember, and it involves eggs, it’s a good idea to ask/check!

[Bacardi1]

While I’m not a member of the “no refrigeration needed ever” camp, your eggs should be just fine. When we used to raise chickens, now & again when some emergency cropped up we’d forget to check the henhouse for eggs that day, & the eggs were all perfectly sound.

[cowboymom]

We never refrigerate our eggs, chicken or duck. If you don’t wash them they’ll keep for quite a long time at room temperature. If you do wash them they won’t last quite as long but geez, I want to say 10 days or so? We use them so quickly I don’t keep track. If you gently shake the egg and you can feel the yolk wobble it’s getting old.

It’s not customary to refrigerate them at all ever in England according to a British friend of the family. She thinks it’s weird that her husband keeps the eggs in the fridge!

[Bacchus]

It should be fine. I know I wouldn’t hesitate to use them. When I lived in S. Korea, they didn’t refrigerate the eggs (in cartons) in the supermarkets, but I don’t know how long they were in the store.

There is some way to tell if eggs are fresh – something with water and sinking/floating? Can’t remember.

[Mukluk]

Put the eggs in a container of water with the water line at least an egg length above the eggs. The sinkers are good. Any floaters are bad.

[Chestnut_Run]

Agree the eggs should be perfectly fine. But wanted to add, if you’ve never eaten duck eggs before, scrambled may not be your best first choice. They turn out much “stiffer” than chicken eggs when you just plain scramble them. They do however make awesome baked goods like cakes. They also make some of the best, fluffiest pancakes too. Goose eggs do too if you ever get them.

Sheila

[cowboymom]

Someone told me once too that some people are very allergic to duck eggs so if you don’t feel good after having your duck eggs, maybe you’re allergic!

[Plainandtall]

Just to understand the logic behind the safety of room temperature fresh eggs- when a bird starts laying eggs to raise a brood- they lay one a day for many days- and then when they have finished developing their clutch to the size they want- only then will they begin to set the eggs and kickstart the little life in the egg to begin developing. So if a hen hatches 14 chicks- the oldest egg sat in that nest for two weeks before she started incubating. In order to sustain life- it can’t be contaminated. If eggs just started rotting at room temperature- there is no way birds would exist.

Even little wild birds- in order to have a syncronized hatch- will begin incubating eggs that are several days old.

I would not want to eat an egg that had been sitting in the henhouse for 14 days- but I would gladly eat one that had been collected clean on day one- and then sat in a bowl on the counter for a week.

I second Chestnut’s suggestion that duck eggs are fantastic in baked goods- but not as appetizing to eat alone. Farm chicken eggs on the other hand- once you get spoiled on them- you won’t ever want to go back to grocery store eggs.

[Chestnut_Run]

[QUOTE=Plainandtall;6891472]
Farm chicken eggs on the other hand- once you get spoiled on them- you won’t ever want to go back to grocery store eggs.[/QUOTE]

You are so totally right on that one! My husband was sort of “meh” about getting chickens, but lovely man that he is, humored me about it. (bought me three for my birthday actually!). We’d had fresh eggs from our chickens for several years and then a skunk pried up our chicken coop door and got in. Killed all our chickens except one. So we had to buy store eggs for the first time in almost 5 years. My husband went to make eggs for breakfast. Put the first egg aside. Put the second egg aside. “Honey, we got bad eggs from the store!”. LOL-nope just store eggs, pale, small yolk, runny. We’ve gotten to the point that if we don’t have enough eggs from our girls, we just don’t eat eggs unless I can find some local farm eggs to buy. They are addictive.

Sheila

[LauraKY]

If you didn’t wash them they’ll be fine. They don’t wash them in many European countries and they sell them at room temperature.

[AliCat518]

I went to Mexican Walmart in February while on vacation. They don’t refrigerate their eggs at all. Eggs are one of the few things my dad can eat (radiation therapy) so he bought some and he was just fine!

[Ridge_Runner]

Washed eggs will keep for about 6-8 weeks in the fridge. Unwashed eggs about a month at room temps. I’d keep them out of the sun and in a cool place.

Once you get hooked on fresh farm eggs, you turn into a real egg junkie. The store bought anemic eggs are so gross that I can’t even eat them.

[Bacardi1]

[QUOTE=Mukluk;6891247]
Put the eggs in a container of water with the water line at least an egg length above the eggs. The sinkers are good. Any floaters are bad.[/QUOTE]

Actually, it’s not that any floaters are “bad” - just old. Eggshells are porous, & as an egg ages, the air space/cell inside increases.

[ReSomething]

When they’re really bad, they blow up. I did the float test on a couple dozen eggs collected here and there one evening, about half sank and the other half floated, some fairly high. The bad bad ones felt light, and the yolk wobbled around in there. While I was doing this one of the floaters that was still wet began to make a funny hissing/sucking noise and then pock it cracked. I grabbed the bowl it was in and RAN it out of the house.

They stay good for quite a while.

[cowboymom]

I once found a nest of eggs that had been missed for quite a long time; I collected them all thinking I would feed the sinkers to the dogs… poured them gently from the bucket to the sink with a few inches of water in it and POW* I thought someone had shot a gun in the room! I was covered in green/blackish nasty slime and nobody in the family would eat an egg for weeks! BAD EGG! Those really bad ones will just explode on you!

[JB]

[QUOTE=Daydream Believer;6892540]

Once you get hooked on fresh farm eggs, you turn into a real egg junkie. The store bought anemic eggs are so gross that I can’t even eat them.[/QUOTE]
Boy, that is the TRUTH!!! I can’t even fathom eating ‘regular" eggs now that we’ve been eating our home grown ones for about 8 months now. The truly do taste better, and the health benefits are amazingly better. 6 free range (TRULY free range, as in eating everything they run across) hens’ eggs have as much Omega 3 as 3 good fish meals, and it doesn’t take a lot to eat 6 eggs a week. Lower cholesterol as well.

The reason for refrigeration is salmonella, which reproduces at a high rate when warm enough. However, because you will be cooking the eggs and since salmonella is instantly killed at (150*? 165?) which is easily reached when cooking, that makes it a moot point.

so yes, your eggs will be fine.

[JB]

[QUOTE=cowboymom;6893615]
I once found a nest of eggs that had been missed for quite a long time; I collected them all thinking I would feed the sinkers to the dogs… poured them gently from the bucket to the sink with a few inches of water in it and POW* I thought someone had shot a gun in the room! I was covered in green/blackish nasty slime and nobody in the family would eat an egg for weeks! BAD EGG! Those really bad ones will just explode on you![/QUOTE]

LMAO!!

Our hens decided to lay “somewhere else” last Summer, and by the time we found them, there were easily 2 dozen or so eggs. I decided to just boil them and feed them back to the chickens. A few were floaters, so I just tossed them. I also tossed a few that were standing straight up. I ended up with maybe 15 or so that sank well, so put them on the stove and turned on the water.

Well… After the water got good and warm, not even boiling, a couple of “bad eggs” cracked open, and Oh. My. Gawd :eek: :eek: “Rotten egg” does NOT begin to describe the nastiness. Not remotely. Nas. Tee.

[Ridge_Runner]

@JB;6893732

Boy, that is the TRUTH!!! I can’t even fathom eating ‘regular" eggs now that we’ve been eating our home grown ones for about 8 months now. The truly do taste better, and the health benefits are amazingly better. 6 free range (TRULY free range, as in eating everything they run across) hens’ eggs have as much Omega 3 as 3 good fish meals, and it doesn’t take a lot to eat 6 eggs a week. Lower cholesterol as well.

I’ve truly become a fresh foods junkie now we raise our own chicken, pork and grass fed beef. I can hardly stand to eat anything out of the store. Factory farm chicken is disgusting…seriously…try some Freedom Rangers or a heritage type bird from a local farmer and you will be ruined forever. Heritage pork?? OMG…we got our Red Wattle pork back and it is incredible. The other night we ate up some old store bought pork chops after eating our friend’s local farm raised pork and the difference in flavor and texture was astonishing. Now we have our own from heritage pigs, I’m really in trouble. Junkie for sure!

What blows my mind is that the average American today has no idea how good this type of food is. We are so used to the horribly bland mass produced stuff that we have never tried the “slow food” type products. I’ve had elderly people try my chicken and come back and tell me that they had not eaten chicken that good since they were kids on their grandparents farm. THAT is a hell of a complement!

[apprider]

Agree with all about fresh eggs being so much better.

Does anyone have any tips for peeling fresh hard boiled eggs?

[ReSomething]

[QUOTE=Daydream Believer;6893769]
. . . Factory farm chicken is disgusting…seriously…try some Freedom Rangers or a heritage type bird from a local farmer and you will be ruined forever. Heritage pork?? OMG…we got our Red Wattle pork back and it is incredible. The other night we ate up some old store bought pork chops after eating our friend’s local farm raised pork and the difference in flavor and texture was astonishing. . . ![/QUOTE]

We had chicken last night from one of the ugly chicks that DH got from TSC, once they start to get those pin feathers in people don’t like to buy them and he had an in to get them at a dollar or fifty cents off. Some of those were the factory breeds with the big breasts that really can’t walk or fly on their own. Raised at home with regular chicken feed they were pretty darn tasty, and tender too - but so were the barred rock roos and the other culls - now the pigs, well we sell ours and eat the old boars and the old sows so we have several homemade sausages that are REALLY good. Not so much the chops and whatnot.

And I guess I was lucky with my bad egg, really lucky.