Missing Eggs ?

We have several laying hens here on our homestead. We get plenty of awesome eggs. But... then production started to drop off ....why ??? Well, I found that a few hens had "flown the coop" and started laying in the woods beside the coop.

Now I have walked by this tree dozens of times and never noticed theses eggs laying there, until I caught this hen in the act of laying an egg.

Two separate nests just inches apart....31 eggs in total.

I home school my kids, so I decided to turn this into a science class experience. First, they gathered the eggs. Next, the took a mixing bowl of cold water and submerged each egg... if the egg lays flat on its side at the bottom of the water it's a perfectly fresh egg. If the egg remains submerged but stands on its end ....it is aging but still safe to eat. If it floats it is rotten and needs to be discarded.

Every one of the 31 eggs was at peak freshness and laid on its side in the water!!!

The next part of our process was cleaning, each of my kids cleaned 15 eggs and I cleaned the first one to show how it is done.

We then used a a bright flashlight in a dark room and candled every egg to make sure that none were fertile. None of the 31 eggs was fertile.

The kids packed them in egg cartons and refrigerated them. When added to the eggs we had already collected from our coop, we had over 5 dozen eggs!!!

Thanks for stopping by and Steem On friends!!!