Chickens!

Qua Sae

Full Member
I am looking after some chickens for the week & the owners have told me that I can take home any eggs that they lay.. This led me to thinking about the safety of chicken eggs produced at home.

How do you know they're safe & how do you keep them safe? Obviously egg farmers have all kinds of testing & regulations that you just can't have at home.

Does anyone here own chickens? Do you take any special precautions?
 
Do they even test eggs??

If so, not something i realised. I thought they were just picked and went straight into the trays and get sold??
 
According to the BBC, the eggs & chickens are tested every so many months for things like salmonella & the cleaning facilities are checked out as well. Only farms that pass are allowed to show the Lion Egg Standard stamp :)

There's a long process between picking the egg & us receiving it.. Like cleaning, checking shape etc. Temperature has to be kept a certain level & whatnot. A lot of people say that during that process, bacteria is more likely to grow than simply moving it from the coop in your garden, giving it a scrub & putting it in your fridge.

I only recently found out that chickens are the ones who have salmonella! I didn't realise that it was an infected chicken that would pass it on to the egg (although it does make sense. Lol). I thought it came from the outside :S
 
Not a chicken keeper, but offering just a few random thoughts here: the transfer won't be such a long process as the commercial one, will it? I mean the transfer time from the nesting box to your kitchen? I would think if you make sure you cook them properly you would be o.k. After all, the owners haven't come down with salmonella yet, have they? :)
 
I keep chickens and having eaten my girls eggs straight after being laid, i don't think I could ever buy a shop egg again! Generally, home produced eggs are good to eat for up to 3 weeks. We're lucky if we have any left after 3 days! The colour of the yolk is so bright that it makes you think your home produced one's are fake! So long as the chickens are in good health, have a varied & healthy diet, you really don't need to worry. For more information try the Omlet website. They're a really good source of information!
P.S I never keep my eggs in the fridge either!
 
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