I cooked over 300 eggs today. You may be wondering why or you may be wondering where I got 300 eggs. Let me explain. I have been holding Icelandic eggs for 30 days and not selling them. I had to do this because my broody girl Lukka returned to the flock after a few weeks of raising babies in the Isbar coop. Since she had “dated” an non-Icelandic rooster during her time away from home I couldn’t sell her eggs as pure Icelandic. Rather than isolate her for 30 days and just not sell her eggs, I chose to just not sell any of the Icelandic eggs until hers were pure again. Common thought is that the eggs stay fertile for 2-3 weeks so waiting a month is safe. Our month is over in two days! But during the time we were not selling any Icelandic eggs we accumulated a lot of them, up to 12-16 per day. I was tossing the eggs at first but then decided to take my friend Kelly’s suggestion to save them, cook them and feed them back to the chickens. I did just that today in a marathon eggstravaganza.
Step 1 was the crack the eggs into a huge mixing bowl and toss the shells into a plastic bag. The shells will be used too! Next step was to beat the eggs with a big serving fork. Step 3 was to pour the beaten egg mixture into a casserole dish that has been generously sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. I filled the mixing bowl four times and filled four large Pyrex dishes to the top! From the counter they were placed into a 350 degree oven until set, then taken outside to the sun-room to cool. You can tell the girls have been free ranging by the orange color of the yolks!
The eggs shells were placed onto cookie sheets and baked in the oven for about a half hour until dried. Tomorrow I will place them in a big plastic bag and beat them with a rolling pin until they are finely crushed. This will be offered free choice to the hens in all three coops. The calcium will help build strong egg shells and for awhile I won’t have to buy oyster shell calcium. As you can see I had a lot of extra eggs from my layers too. We don’t actually eat many eggs. Michael is a night owl and doesn’t usually get up in time for breakfast and I am a yogurt and toast kinda’ gal. Sometimes we eat breakfast for dinner though and I certainly like to use fresh eggs for baking.
When the project was complete I had used up at least 20 dozen eggs, probably much more and now have nutritious eggs to feed back to them for a protein boost. I plan to cut the eggs into blocks, freeze them and put one in each coop a couple of times a week. They won’t be the color, taste and consistency we would like but the chickens will go nuts over it. Here’s my loot out in the sunroom tonight. It feels good not to waste what those girls worked so hard to produce!
While this would gross me out on the breakfast table it will make a little hen’s skirt fly up! I’ll update tomorrow with pictures of that!
UPDATE!
As promised, here are the Isbars enjoying the baked eggs.
The layer hens weren’t so sure but eventually ate the whole thing.
The Other Mary says
I often scramble eggs for my flock when quantity allows. I’ve never baked them….great idea for doing it ahead and storing!
Kathy says
Yummy eggs! You could make an egg cookbook! Surely you have lots of recipes that use eggs. Ummm, tasty!