Why We Want to Water-Glass Eggs
Water glassing eggs is a centuries old fashioned method of preserving farm fresh eggs for winter use. It is common for chickens to decrease egg production during the winter and while they are molting, so this method helps to ensure we have healthy eggs put back to use during the winter when their production is lessened. Let’s tackle why egg production decreases first.
As the winter approaches, there are fewer daylight hours. Chickens need a certain amount of daylight hours in order to consistently lay eggs. (I’ll do another article in the future on how I feel about adding light in their coop during the winter.)
Chickens also do not lay eggs while they are molting. Molting is a process where chickens lose their old feathers and new feathers are grown. This happens just before the bitter cold of winter strikes. However, I have had some chickens with not many feathers when it’s been -15 outside for two weeks straight! During this molt, in order to grow new feathers, a massive amount of protein and other nutrients are needed to produce these new feathers. There simply isn’t enough protein to produce eggs each day AND grow new feathers. The molting process can last between 1-3 months and most often takes place in the late fall/early winter.
Now that you understand why chickens lay fewer eggs in the winter, let’s talk about what water-glassing is and why it is AUHMAZING!!
Benefits of Water-Glassing Eggs
Water-glassing eggs is a centuries old method of preserving eggs. This method requires:
-NO refrigeration
-NO freezing
-NO canning
-NO pickling
-NO dehydrating
-NO freeze drying
All you need are the following:
-a food grade bucket your choice of size with a lid. (we use a five gallon food grade plastic bucket.)
-1 gallon room temp water (we use our well tap water)
-4 oz. by WEIGHT of food grade lime (The lime MUST be food grade. Below are a couple links to some I use. This lime may be called pickling lime, calcium hydroxide, hydrated lime, and slack lime.
https://www.mrswages.com/product/mrs-wages-pickling-lime/#description
-clean straight from the chicken butt eggs. You can use chicken, duck or goose eggs.
Once you have this ready, simply store in the coolest part of your house out of sunlight and use the eggs as you need them. A wonderful plus to this is, as mentioned earlier, this doesn’t have to be refrigerated, and it can be left at a cooler room temp.
"Special" Eggs Required
Even though this method is super simple, it does require “special” eggs.
There are some NO NOs on eggs:
-NO store bought eggs as they are old and washed
-NO dirty eggs.
-NO poopy eggs.
-NO muddy eggs.
-NO washed eggs.
-NO cracked eggs.
-NO old eggs
-I personally don’t even use my fresh eggs for this if they’ve been in the fridge.
Here are the eggs you want:
-Eggs that come STRAIGHT out of the chicken’s vent and are clean and unwashed. You don’t want a poop streak, and you don’t want them dirty or muddy.
-The eggs that are FRESH STRAIGHT from her vent, you want to get them into your premade lime water that day or the next and do NOT refrigerate them in between.
WHY?
Chicken eggs have tiny little pores on the outside of their shells and a protective coating called “bloom” covers the pores and the outside of the shell. This bloom helps to protect the egg inside from any bacteria on the outside of the shell. When you wash the eggs, even with water, the bloom is removed. Once the bloom is removed, it is much easier for bacteria to enter the inside of the egg through the pores. This is why many backyard chicken keepers do not wash their eggs before selling to customers. Instead, they will put poopy dirty eggs in the egg cartons and the customers wash their eggs right before using.
The Process...
STEP 1:
The first thing to do is to weigh out your lime. You’ll want 1 oz. by weight for every quart of water. Here I have 2 oz. of the calcium hydroxide lime. It is important to note that even though this is food grade lime, we need to use caution and not inhale or ingest it or contact it on our skin.
STEP 2: Place your measured water into your water-glassing bucket. Remember 1 oz. by weight of lime for every 1 quart of water. Carefully dump your lime into your water or vice versa; be careful not to create too much “dust” and cover your nose and mouth if needed.
STEP 3: Once the lime and water are combined, stir them together well. Please note, the lime will not fully dissolve into the water, ever. Instead, it will be chalky like and the lime will settle to the bottom and also sit on top of the eggs.
STEP 4: Choose your eggs wisely. The eggs you see pictured, are unwashed, unrefrigerated, were collected fresh last night, and are perfectly spotless and clean from the chicken’s vent.
If you look closely, you’ll see this egg has a small speck of mud/poop on it and another on the other side. Instead of washing, I could rub this off, but again I’d be rubbing off the protective bloom. So this egg will not be going into the bucket. The same goes for the dirty eggs in the basket. Dirty eggs are common after a heavy rain with free range chickens.
STEP 5: Now we need to gently place our fresh eggs into the bucket, careful not to drop and crack the eggs. I use a long handled ladle to lower the eggs into the bucket. If you use your hands, wash your hands thoroughly after coming into contact with the lime as it can hurt your skin or dry your skin out like it does me.
Here you can see some eggs in the bucket. The lime has settled to the bottom of the bucket and is also sitting on top of the eggs. Keep a lid on the bucket to keep the water from evaporating.
Q&A
Here are some general questions I get asked, so I thought I’d share them with you.
Q: Why is it called water-glassing?
A: When people first started water-glassing their eggs, they used sodium silicate to preserve their eggs, and if the water all evaporated out, their eggs would be stuck in a transparent glass like solid. Hence the name water-glassing.
Q: What kind of water should I use?
A: We have a water softener here in our home, but we just use our well water straight from the tap. If your water is treated or if you have very hard well water, consider boiling it for 10 minutes or so and using it once it’s cooled down or you could use distilled or spring water from the store.
Q: Can I add more eggs each day?
A: Yes, you can add more eggs to this lime water bucket each day.
Q: How long can I add eggs to the same lime water?
A: This will be different for each family, but for us, a family of four, I only use the water-glass method for the winter. I start in November and continue adding eggs until January-February.
I don’t recommend adding eggs AND using eggs at the same time; if you do, be sure to do your best to get eggs from the bottom of the bucket, but it will be nearly impossible to tell which is the newest as each time you remove an egg from the bottom, a newer one from the top will fall to the bottom.
I recommend using this method seasonally.
Q: Can I reuse the lime water?
A: It would appear to be ok to reuse the lime water, but it’s not recommended. The lime is quite affordable and just in case an egg gets slightly cracked or impurities did get in, it’s better safe than sorry and just replace the lime water with a fresh mixture each season you water-glass eggs.
Q: How long are the eggs good for in this lime water?
A: This will vary as with anything such as herbs or canning. If stored under the best conditions such as out of sunlight and as cool as possible without freezing, these will be good for 6 months, 8 months, and some people have even had these to be good for 1 year or so. As far as what we do personally, once we put our last egg in in January or February, we try to use them up by the following August.
Q: How do I use them?
A: You use these eggs exactly like a freshly laid egg. The ONLY thing to note is once you take them out of the lime bucket, rinse the lime water off of them completely before cracking. That’s it. You can scramble, fry, bake, etc… with them.
Q: Any other thing I should know?
A: I will say that we had a few that had a very slight subtle change in taste, after they had been sitting for 8 or so months. If we hadn’t known they were limed eggs, we most likely wouldn’t have noticed the difference in taste. We still ate them, and they cooked up just fine.
Also note that the longer they are stored, the weaker the egg white gets, (this is natural with any egg) and this may cause the yolk to bust more readily.
I PERSONALLY don’t feed these shells back to the chickens, but I do put them in the garden.
Fresh VS. Limed Egg
Here's a side by side comparison of a water-glassed egg from 11/2020 and a farm fresh egg from 2/2021 Neither eggs have ever been in the fridge.
Fresh VS. Limed Egg
The water-glassed egg has an orange yolk because it was laid while the hens were eating fresh plants and bugs. The fresh egg is a light yellow because the hens were locked up for two weeks and fed only grain due to the negative freezing temperatures. (Note: the white bullseye dot on top of the yolk shows it is fertilized.) The eggs cracked, smelled, scrambled, and tasted the same.
What Will You Do?
Now it’s up to you. You saw how easy it was, and I hope I answered all the questions you may have about it. We have been doing this for a few years now, and it’s a wonderful feeling knowing I have eggs put back at room temp for a few months.
I used 39g instead of 34g is that going to ruin my eggs.
I highly doubt it as that’s not more over an ounce anyway. I personally wouldn’t be worried about it.