PR ESER V ING EG G S It might surprise you to learn that when you raise your own chickens, eggs are, in large part, seasonal. It seems to always be feast or famine when it comes to chickens laying eggs. You’ll collect more eggs than you know what to do with in spring and summer, but be ready for an almost complete shutdown of production in late fall and winter. That’s because the length of the day dictates egg production. A hen needs fourteen to sixteen hours of daylight for her ovary to release a yolk so it can begin its journey down the oviduct. So shorter days result in drastically reduced egg production, and the winter months can be lean eggwise (unless you resort to artificial light, which I’m not a fan of). While commercial egg farms use artificial light in their chicken barns to force year- round laying, I prefer to go the au naturel route and give my hens a much-needed winter break so they can relax and come back laying with a vengeance in the spring. Thus, I always “put up” some eggs at the end of summer, so I don’t have to use store-bought eggs during the winter. When your hens are earning their keep, you’ll spend hours surfing Pinterest looking for new ways to use up all those extra eggs; however, when your chickens are on break, you’ll curse them as you forlornly reach for that canister of oatmeal from the pantry. For this reason, it’s good to know a few methods of preserving excess eggs when they’re bountiful to use later during the egg drought! There are several simple ways to preserve eggs when they are in abundance to store and eat during leaner times. Preserving Eggs 35
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