Eggs Come In Many Colors!

 Did you know eggs don’t just come in bright white and light brown? Sure chances are you know about robin eggs being blue but did you know some chickens lay blue eggs? Some chickens lay green eggs! Some are pale pink and some are even very dark brown.

The chicken egg above is a large dark brown chicken eggs with black spots. They come darker even! It is our first on our little backyard farm and it is from a Black Copper Maran Hen we named Maleficent. It is a fabulous egg and yes, very edible. Most of the chickens we have as pets will lay some variety of brown eggs, we do have an Olive Egger that should lay olive green colored eggs and we hope to get chickens in the future that give us blue and pink colored eggs too. Why? Because they are just so cool and clearly ignored here in America.

How old are your eggs?

So one of the great things about having back yard chickens is that we can be sure we are getting farm fresh eggs. But even if we didn’t have our eggs it might still be important to be able to tell how old the eggs are. Eggs you see have small egg sacs in them at first. The egg itself is covered in tiny pores that air and moisture and even bacteria can cross. But, there are safety measures built into the amazing egg, one of them being it’s bloom, a covering on the egg that protects it. More on this in a minute. As time goes on the inner membrane of the egg pulls away from the egg wall and fills with air, that in time will help a chick breath in the eggs and hatch! Even if the egg does not have a chick in it though, he air cell is still made, and the older the egg is, the larger the egg cell. You could candle the egg to guess how old but it is simplest to do a float test. Fill a container with water and see if your egg floats. If it is over a month old, chances are it will float. There are many eggs in the world, I would eat a fresher one!

Did you know some places don’t refrigerate their eggs?

Here in America it is the law that we refrigerate our eggs, or rather that those selling the eggs do so. It is in theory because of bacteria like salmonella, bacteria grows more slowly when cold. She why doesn’t every place on earth refrigerate eggs? Because those other places don’t WASH the eggs first? Ewwww you say? Well lets talk about the bloom, that built in safety measure of the egg. It is a coating that helps prevent bacteria from getting into the egg. If we wash off the bloom, we take that protection away, so of course we would have to refrigerate the eggs. So if you travel and find that the eggs are on the shelf next to the bread don’t think something has gone very wrong, just don’t wash the eggs till your ready to use them!