Cleaning eggs

I have a small chicken tractor with just two hens. The roost nest is in the back furthest from the open “run” area. My hens like to get back in there and sleep in the roost box which creates a problem with chicken poop building up if its not changed every other day. My questions are, when would you throw away an egg due to it having manure on it (Say a hen messes once or twice directly on the egg) and the other question is how do I keep them from using the nest box as a sleeping location? They do have a board that they used to roost on until the rooster died that I had in there with them.

Matt Burks
McMinnville, Tennessee

No, don’t throw away eggs with manure on them. This is common and eggs are easily washed with plain old warm water. Hens using nesting boxes in a chicken tractor is a very common happening. Usually the only remedy is to make the coop larger and put higher roosts as chickens usually prefer to roost high and will then quit using the nest boxes to sleep in. — Jackie

Canning on a rocket stove

So, I’m getting ready to make my move back home to Canada. Starting to pack up the boxes, etc. The finances are going to be pretty tight until I find a job up home. With finances in mind, I was wondering about alternative heating methods for pressure canning i.e.) wood stove, open fire, etc.; Searching the internet, I found this video on test canning with a rocket stove: http://youtu.be/17tKFDo97Fc

Would using a rocket stove (I’ve built one before) be a do-able source of heat for pressure canning? Along with the question of course, safety and prudence come into play as well — constant monitoring to make sure the correct pressure is maintained, etc. Reading over the comments to the video there were some questions on safety, ruining your pressure canner, etc.

Cheryll Carter
Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts

While you can home can on a rocket stove, as seen in the video, I’d rather not. It’d be real hard to adjust the heat to vary the temperature when you are canning. You can certainly can on a wood stove with a flat top. I canned on my kitchen range for decades. On a kitchen range you can slide your canner a bit to the side to slow down the rising pressure or slip it back over the heat when you need to give it a boost upward. With the rocket stove, the heat needs to be regulated by the amount and kind of wood you have burning — very difficult. Also there’s the stability issue. A heavy canner can be dangerous on top of a rocket stove. I’d skip it. Or go with a table-top propane two or three burner and just use your small tanks to fire it and re-fill between canning operations. — Jackie

1 COMMENT

  1. Get brown egg layers and it doesn’t show as much :-)

    I bought a 5 pack of green scrubbies for $1, and I cut one of those in half and use it to clean off the eggs under warm water. One half of a scrubbie will last me months and months.

    In my smaller coop (built when I didn’t know what I was doing, so there’s no easy fix) I often get poopie eggs. You have to clean them that day, otherwise the longer you wait the more stained they can get. I dump a bunch of shredded paper in here every couple of days and that really seems to help. Talk to some friends and perhaps you’ll find someone who can give you shredded paper from the office.

    I sell my eggs, so I usually just save the dirties for myself. The demand has picked up so much that often the dirties are the only eggs I have to eat!

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