Our Very Eggciting Egg Experiment

Sometimes when I collect eggs from my coop, one of the chickens has mischievously pecked a hole in one of her sisters' eggs leaking yellow yolk all over my daily stash. I do not keep any eggs with yolk smeared all over them. Dried yolk is next to impossible to wash off, especially if the egg sits in a hot coop all day long before I collect. It's like glue that will not come off the shell. I never want to risk contaminating my cracked eggs to yolk that has gone bad and could contain salmonella bacteria.

On Monday, I had to throw several eggs away because of a yolky mess in the coop. My chickens will eat their own eggs if I crack open the shell and leave them in my compost pile. Thankfully, they haven't figured out how to eat eggs inside the coop yet, otherwise I would never have eggs to collect! I know this sounds kind of morbid, chickens eating their own babies, but it's actually quite healthy for them. Eating egg shells gives them calcium to build more shell in their stomach to form more eggs. The protein from the eggs is quite nourishing for their bodies and helps keep them healthy. Feeding chickens back their eggs also helps cut down on my feeding cost. In other words, if an egg gets broken before we have a chance to eat it, it definitely does not go to waste at our house.

While I was throwing eggs against the ground trying to open them for the chickens, I had an extremely tough time getting them to crack. I threw them as hard as I could, but they just kept bouncing against the ground like a bunch of tennis balls. I tried throwing them high up in the air to crash down with a mighty force, but again I could not get them to break open. After throwing the eggs several times, I was quite annoyed that I couldn't get my very simple task done. I was also really impressed with the strength of the egg shells. I tried tapping them with my muck boot, but that didn't work. I tried standing on the eggs, but that didn't work. Finally, I stood on one egg bouncing my leg up and down until the egg finally burst open. I had a small workout trying to crack five eggs out in the middle of my yard that day. It probably was quite a humorous thing to see, a big lady like me throwing eggs over and over again in the yard stomping her feet in frustration at the silly things.

I did a little bit of research to find out why my eggs wouldn't crack. First of all, the hard yolk coating formed a Kryptonite-like covering over the eggshell. I think even Superman would have struggled cracking my eggs this week, haha! Secondly, the shape of the egg is pretty unique. Because of it's arched shape on the top and the bottom, eggs can withstand a lot of pressure, as long as it's evenly distributed. That is why a large 10 pound chicken can sit on a pile of eggs without breaking them, because her fluffy butt is sitting evenly on top of all the eggs. The eggs' major downfall is that they can't withstand having pressure on an uneven surface such as cracking an egg on the edge of a bowl. The egg then cracks without any difficulty.

Since my eggs were incredibly difficult to crack this week, I decided to do a science experiment with my kids...to see if we could stand on 24 eggs without breaking them. We watched a couple YouTube videos to see how people successfully stand on eggs. The trick is to carefully put a flat foot on the eggs with even pressure. No problem, right? Since Halloween is coming up, I thought it would be even more fun to have my kiddos put on their costumes for this experiment. Below are the results of our four contenders standing on eggs:

Contender Number One: Pretty Black Kitty, 55 Pounds, She Didn't Break Any Eggs!

Contender Number Two: Yoshi, 65 Pounds, He Didn't Break Any Eggs!

Contender Number Three: Terrified Ring Master, 100 pounds, He Broke 1 Egg!

Contender Number Four: Princess Mommy, 135 Pounds (Wink, Wink), Broke 11 Eggs!

Princess Mommy probably would have been more successful with this experiment if she put her second foot on more carefully with more control. I held my kids' hands as they carefully placed their feet on top of the eggs, but I didn't grab a hand when I stepped onto the eggs myself. I think that bit of uneven pressure was my downfall. All the eggs broke when I put my second foot on them. It also probably would have been helpful if Princess Mommy actually did weigh 135 pounds, haha!

So our little experiment explains why grocery stores can stack hundreds upon hundreds of eggs on top of each other before they are purchased. If eggs have an equal amount of pressure on top of them, they are quite strong and will not crack.

I consider our eggy experiment pretty successful and so did my chickens. They got to eat my yolky mess after we were done "walking on eggshells". The kids are already asking when we can stand on eggs again, which means they had a little fun with mommy today....another win.

Thanks for reading my Country Squawk,

Kelly