Should you refrigerate our eggs? Yes!
- Laura Wayte
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
The incredible, edible egg. That was a tag-line for the egg industry for good reason. Eggs are small packages of concentrated nutrition for us and a nifty reproduction method for a large percentage of Earth’s living creatures.
In order to enable protected embryo development outside the body of the mother, eggs do have super anti-biotic powers! This fact leads some people to decide they don't need to refrigerate the eggs.
At the very last stage before being laid, eggs are coated with a protective layer called the "bloom" or "cuticle." This is an antibiotic film added in the final 2 hours of development that seals the porous shell so the embryo has time to develop without bacteria interfering. After a period of time, the seal wears off and the millions of pores in the shell allow oxygen to enter the egg for the developing chick.
This initial protective seal layer is important because the egg passes through the cloaca to leave the hen’s body. The cloaca, also called the "vent," is multi-purposed: fecal and urinary material pass through as well as eggs. This is why the antibiotic bloom is biologically necessary to protect the egg from bacterial contamination. Without it, far fewer eggs would make it through the incubation period.
Some people believe this scenario means they don't need to refrigerate eggs.
This could work for those who don’t wash their home-grown eggs if they eat the eggs quickly after they are laid. Obviously, this worked pretty well and was standard in the time before refrigeration was widespread. It even became important for creating certain recipes - a cold egg does not incorporate into batters as easily as a room temperature egg, causing changes in the rise and texture of the baked product.
Personally, as a long-time chicken keeper, I do wash my home-grown eggs because they come into the house dirty. They may be fine to store on the counter, but I don't want to have dust from the henhouse inadvertently dropping into my frying pan and recipes as I crack the shell.
So how should you store our Deck Family Farm eggs? Refrigerate!
At Deck we do a minimal amount of egg washing. If they are dirty we wash them with a damp cloth and running water, but if they are clean we do not do much more than dust them off. Since you won’t be able to tell which eggs are and are not washed, we recommend always refrigerating them.
We collect eggs two times every day (12 months of the year) and each collection is carefully tracked so we can date them. Each carton is stamped with a date marking 6 weeks after the eggs were laid. This means we expect the egg to be edible up until that date. Given that we deliver frequently and directly to our customers or to small, local stores, it is likely that you are buying eggs about 1 week after they were laid.
Incidentally, the USDA does not even have a mandated expiration date for eggs. They recommend 3 to 5 weeks after purchasing the eggs, even if the expiration date has passed.
If you find yourself concerned about your eggs, here's a home testing method worth knowing:
Place the egg in a bowl of water. If it:
Sinks and lies flat: very fresh.
Sinks but stands upright: older but still fine.
Floats: discard — air cell too large, indicating age or spoilage.
If you need your eggs room temperature for a recipe, just put them in a bowl of hot tap water for a few minutes to bring them up from cold to room-temperature.
