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By Jesse Laflamme
The journey begins in a nesting box, inside the barn, where one of our hens lays her egg. She will typically lay one egg per day, usually in the morning hours. From there the egg will slowly roll down the inclined, padded surface of the nesting box to the conveyor belt that runs the length of the barn. It will usually sit motionless on the belt until about 11AM when the farmer turns on the belt and gets ready to pack eggs in the packing room. The conveyor delivers the egg, along with several thousand others from that morning, to the packing station. A packing machine gently loads the eggs from the conveyor into plastic trays. The farmer, and if they are lucky a family member or two, run the packing machine, pull out any cracked eggs, and carefully stack the trays of eggs onto a pallet. Each pallet contains 900 dozen eggs. The pallet is then rolled into the adjacent cold storage room that is kept at 45 degrees.
Once a week, one of our fleet of Nellie’s “Rooster Cruiser” trucks will turn into the farm and roll up to the small loading dock next to the cold storage room. At that time, the week’s worth of eggs, somewhere between ten to twenty thousand dozen, depending on the farm, will be loaded onto the truck. The truck will make a few more stops at other farms in the area until it is full and then proceed to one of our two processing plants in Pennsylvania or New Hampshire.
At the plant, the egg will now be rolled into our “nest run” cold storage area. When we are ready to run the eggs from that farm, the egg trays are loaded into our egg washer where they first go through an Organic citrus-based solution. Brushes do a gentle scrub before they get a sanitizing rinse.
At this point things get pretty technical as each individual egg is photographed and cataloged by the computer. The camera is looking for specs of dirt, cracks and other imperfections. It is also gauging the size of the egg so that down the line it will know to send them to the correct packing station for Large, Extra Large, Jumbo and so on. Each egg is also tapped lightly by a tuning fork at this stage to test for hairline cracks that the camera cannot see. Broken or otherwise problematic eggs are pulled from the line automatically. A little less than 1% of them are simply thrown out to become pig feed for other farms and other are sent to a “breakers” line where they are cracked into our liquid egg products. The intact eggs move up the line to the packaging station based on their size and are automatically placed into cartons, never being touched by human hands. From there they go into master cases and are put back onto a truck.
From here, the trail can get a little complicated. Sometimes, our trucks will deliver right to a grocery chain’s central warehouse and they will redistribute them to their individual stores. In other cases, we might deliver them to an independent distributor to haul for us. And in some cases, we might even deliver our eggs to a big factory farm where they are “cross docked” and loaded onto other trucks that do individual store delivery. That’s because we don’t operate a big enough fleet to drive to individual stores, nor would we have enough eggs of our own to deliver even if we did. So in those cases where a big caged egg company is also the sole egg distributor for a given location, we have to “ride along” with them. That’s why you can see our trucks backed up to these mega farms. It’s not because we’re picking up eggs there, it’s because we’re delivering them there! Not an ideal situation, but for us, the only way to get our eggs where they need to go.
The final leg of the journey is from the store’s back room out to the egg shelf, and then home to your kitchen table. The typical time from nest to table is about 25 days. That is well within what USDA recommends for fresh egg consumption and still leaves plenty of time for you to store in your refrigerator before eating. We print the “Best By” date right on our carton as to when we recommend you consume the eggs by. But don’t worry, eggs are very resilient to spoiling and it’s possible to eat them beyond that date and be fine. We don’t recommend that of course, but typically you only lose a little bit of freshness. A good test if you’re not sure of an egg’s freshness is to drop it into a bowl of water. If it sinks, it’s still fresh. If it floats, that means that the egg has had time to develop air pockets between the shell and the egg and it’s time to toss it.
Once your eggs are safely home from the store and in the fridge, it’s time to cook them up! If you’re looking for recipe inspiration, here are some of our favorites.
Love your eggs! Unfortunately I missed a bag when getting groceries in from the store. The eggs sat in the car for 4 hours on a 70 degree day. Should we eat them or toss?
Hi Cindy, unfortunately we can't recommend that you eat the eggs. We have some more information on our safety tips here: https://www.nelliesfreerange.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-egg-safety We're sorry for the bad news, but we like to err on the side of caution. Please let us know if we may assist further.
,'what does white spot on eggs mean?
Hi, could you describe this experience for us a little more? We'd love to chat more about it with you in our email inbox: [email protected], thanks!
Do you guys keep roosters on the property with your girls? Your eggs are beautiful! This is actually my first time finding them in my local store. Can’t wait for dinner tonight! Omelettes and biscuits. 😋
Thank you for reaching out to us, Melissa! We're glad to hear you've been enjoying our eggs, and we're happy to tell you a bit about our farms. We do not have roosters on our farms, and only allow hens. Most egg farms are run this way. Please let us know if we can answer any additional questions for you!
I eat 2 or 4 eggs along with Jones chicken sausage (Watchers approved )
Sounds like a great combination, Philip!
Only eggs we use
Thanks for your kind words, Mabel! We appreciate your support!
Extremely interesting! I was raised on a farm and have "gathered" many eggs in the basket that my great grandmother made for me. Oh, how I wish I still had that beautifully hand made basket. Nellie's Eggs are as good as the ones that came from the chickens my grandmother raised.
Our hearts are full from your description of life on the farm, Shirley. We appreciate your high praise!
Very interesting reading. Thank you. Do I understand the hen, after laying her egg, then runs back outside if she wishes, to do the "free range" thing?
Hi Shirley! Our girls are able to come and go the rest of the day, so you'll certainly find them enjoying the pasture if they choose.
I wish I had heard more about the hens...where they are allowed to be free range, how many in how large an area, some photos, etc.? I buy Nellies because of the free range and humanely treated label - very important to me (along with organic). Didn't realize there were so many eggs - but of course, Nellie's is so popular there would have to be! Do you allow visits to your farm(s)? Where in NH are you? P.S. - I used to help with sorting, cleaning, and candling eggs at the farms around me. Sent my sons to the local organic farm camp - they loved it!
Thanks for your comment, Irene! We encourage you to check out our YouTube channel to see our girls in action: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3VTJAMZgF4QSi3vQHRaoNA. We do offer farm tours, typically during the summer. We'd love to have you join one! Be sure to keep an eye on our website for upcoming dates and locations: https://www.nelliesfreerange.com/our-hens/free-range-fun. If you have any specific questions about our hens and their free range lifestyle, you'll find lots of information here: https://www.nelliesfreerange.com/our-hens/free-range-hens. Please don't hesitate to drop us a line with any other questions you may have!
Fascinating process. With such tender care, no wonder Nellie’s eggs are so good.
Thank you for your kind comment, Joan! Each egg is so special and deserves the utmost care and careful handling!
Love you guys, we love all you do for your hens and love that they are treated special. We live in GA but when we go to visit the children in FL there are Nellies eggs in their refrigerators as well.
We are all a big family here at Nellie's Free Range and we are always touched to connect with families all across the country as well, Jacqueline, so thank you so much for sharing!
Fascinating! I never realized how many steps were involved in getting eggs to market... or how highly technical the "testing" process is. I have a whole new appreciation for egg farms now. I would love to see a video of it all!
It is quite the process for something as simple as an egg to make sure only the highest quality product reaches our wonderful customers like you, Sue! If you check out our YouTube channel, you also can actually catch a few glimpses into different stages of the process if that interests you as well.
Very educational. I didn’t know about the 25 days from nest to table though. I was hoping for “farm fresh” eggs.
Thanks for taking the time to read about the journey of our eggs, Helene! Our eggs are actually considered "farm fresh," but that term can be a bit confusing. The 25 days that it takes for our eggs to reach your store is actually a fairly short time compared to other commercial eggs, and the reason for that length of time is due to FDA and USDA requirements (we have to wash, grade, and package the eggs) that don't all apply to local or small backyard farms.
My carton has 10:26 Feb 03 on it. It doesn't best by or sell by... I this a best by date??
Our apologies for any confusion surrounding the date, Sharon. If your carton does not specify "sell by," then this date is a best before date, meaning we can't recommend that you consume the eggs beyond that date. We hope those helps!