We have a lot of old girls in our flock; I feel that a life time of service providing eggs, compost and weeding shouldn’t be rewarded with death when laying starts to wane. We always have a few younger hens coming up to lay too though, so our egg production during peak spring laying is about five eggs per day from a total of ten adult hens. Five eggs a day is just too many for our needs these days, there being only two of us most of the time (and my daughter can’t eat eggs, even when she is home). So I have been looking for ways to preserve eggs for years now.

I haven’t found anything remotely workable before, but this technique looks like my style; easy, cheap and effective. Water-glassing is a method which uses good old chemistry to seal the shell of an egg and prevent bacteria from penetrating the shell and causing it to go bad. I found a particularly good recipe for making water-glass (this version is actually lime water, but apparently they are all called water-glass) here. 

Most sites and books seem to state that the lime chemically seals the shell of the egg so that no oxygen or bacteria can get in and this preserves the eggs for up to eight months or so (some sites say twelve months). For this reason it is very important to make sure your eggs are clean, with no mud or chook poop on them, it is also really important to not wash the natural protective layer off the egg before preserving. All the older sources recommend having your lime solution ready to go and placing eggs into it each day as they come in from the chook pen.

Water-glassing solution

30g hydrated lime (slaked lime)

1 litre clean water

Combine water and lime, pour into a light proof container with a lid. Carefully place clean unwashed eggs into solution and store in a cool place.

Eggs will keep for 8 months.

I will leave this dozen eggs here on the bench until January or so. Look forward to an update when I open the first preserved egg. This could be one very smelly experiment.