After the winter egg draught, its weird to have so many eggs again! We have 16 hens, and get about -9 eggs/day, which isn't too bad considering half of them are 2 years old and 3 of them are currently clucky. We also get the occasional egg from the guinea fowl and I can't decide if we should hatch some of them.... they have been a little bit crazy!
I thought you might be interested in the different eggs. In the photo below, all the eggs on the right are chicken eggs. The little one at the top is a "fairy egg", we've never had one before, and I'm not sure who laid it. We get quite a size range, but not usually quite that small! The egg on the top left is the guinea fowl egg, they have a pointy top and a very hard shell, they are slightly smaller than the typical chicken egg. The one of the bottom left is a duck egg from a friend, for comparison.
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| eggs from various poultry |
When we have lots of eggs, I usually try to sell them, but it seems that most people don't eat as many eggs as we do, and it can be hard to get rid of them all! We have 2 each for breakfast nearly everyday (and by the way they are not actually bad for you - any more!), but even then, it doesn't take long to build up an excess. My main solution is to make a simple quiche, mainly just eggs and kale, with onion, mushroom, bacon, leek or anything else from the garden that goes with eggs. I also make cakes and icecream (when we also have the cream and milk to spare). I have read about freezing eggs and even drying eggs to make powder, but I have never tried this.
How do you use up excess eggs?
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or just send me an email eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com.
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Years ago, when we had a glut we used to preserve them in waterglass. This we bought from a chemist.
ReplyDeleteWe can never have enough eggs nowadays as, luckily, we are able to sell all our excess.
It was good to have a bucket of eggs under the stairs for the lean times or if we were going to do a big bake.
Gill in the UK
Isnt Rhonda pickling eggs? Is it possible to make egg powder at home to use during winter? You look like a healthy intelligent woman and yet you are eating so many eggs. This makes me laugh as i was told so many years ago that you could only have two eggs a week. How Funny. I grew up on a farm as well and if it is there, you eat it. Eggs are a complete food. Eat away......
ReplyDeleteSounds like our flock only we are into fall and getting maybe one egg now. I haven't got new birds as the price of feed is so high that it is hard to justify getting replacements. We are burning all our grain in ethanol.
ReplyDeleteour hennies are shutting down - we got TWO eggs yesterday. just two! they are all on notice.... and i broke down and bought a sack of layer mash for them.
ReplyDeleteWe also found that most people don't eat many eggs. Usually it was because they were still under the impression that too many eggs were bad for you. Only shows that once an idea is out there it is difficult to change.
ReplyDeleteThe other problem we found with selling eggs was although people would rave about how wonderful they were compared to the shop bought article they would just as easily revert to buying the commercial article and forget the experience.
Freezing: Friends of ours who made sausages would accumulate eggs by freezing in packs of a dozen (minus the shell). Then defrost and use them as a binding agent. We have never tried freezing.
Sometimes we can trade surplus with others such as our oyster farmers who throw in some extra oysters but usually when there is an accumulation we boil them and it becomes a meal for the chickens.
Have you tried baking gluten free cakes? They can use up to 6 eggs in a recipe! Try googling orange and almond cake (love this one - so moist) and "the best ever gluten free chocolate cake" but it uses coconut flour which is available online or through your local organic shop.
ReplyDeleteI think you can also make zucchini slice and freeze for later. It would make a quick lunch option to take to work or the other property. I also love bacon and egg pizza which you make in a lamington tin. Use your sourdough or yeast bread to make the pizza base, place in pan, sprinkle with bacon (or ham) salt, pepper, chopped parsely, grated cheese, then pour beaten eggs over the top - bake like a normal pizza.
We also feed our eggs back to our chickens, but it is cooked like scrambled eggs, added with whatever dinner scraps we have left over and stale bread. An excess of cherry tomatoes thrown in and they're in heaven! It's best given to them in the morning before the heat starts up though. And they haven't started eating their eggs because we feed them eggs. They don't relate it to raw eggs once its cooked. But we also notice if we don't give them enough shell grit, they will start eating their eggs. Increase the shell grit and they stop - which is something I think you stumbled upon too.
Here's my favourite French crepe batter recipe, courtesy of Julia Child. It's a great way to use up eggs:
ReplyDeleteIn a blender (or you can do it by hand) mix 1 cup cold water, 1 cup cold milk and 4 eggs. Whizz this for a few seconds, then add in 1/2 tsp salt, 1.5 cups flour and 4 tbsp melted butter. Whizz again.
Let it sit for an hour (if you can wait, which my brood never can) then pour small portions into a hot buttered frypan to make lovely thin, delicious crepes! Our favourite options for topping are lemon and sugar or jam and cream.
We sell through an honesty box and at work, but it can be a struggle when you have a glut. I pickled some last year - great with a packet of crisps or to give friends who like them!
ReplyDeleteWe are getting around 9 eggs from our dozen and it is a challenge to plug through them - just the other night we went without steak and had eggs instead. But we do like to share them with friends who appreciate super fresh eggs.
ReplyDeletethanks for the comments everyone, seems to be a common "problem", but lots of good suggestions here!
ReplyDeleteVeggie slice (cut and frozen if necessary for lunches) and my last venture was raspberry clafoutis as the two things we have in excess around here right now are raspberries and duck eggs. Such a terrible problem to have...
ReplyDelete