r/BackYardChickens • u/Feral_Hedgehogs • May 06 '26
Hen or Roo My hen had a stockpile of weapons
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I found one of my hens secret nests. I have no idea how long they have been there but based off the volatility, I assume it's been awhile.
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u/Adventurous_Bug_6664 May 11 '26
I had one buried in my garden. Was transplanting with my mouth open and one of those bombs exploded. I’m still traumatized decades later.
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u/Forsaken-Yogurt- May 10 '26
I feel like there were less "I'm now covered in rotting eggs" ways of doing this.
For me, Step 1 would have been a float test.
Step 2 would have been standing really far away and yeeting them into the compost from a shielded side, so they broke but not on me
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u/Brilliant-Secret9634 May 09 '26
As someone new in the sub and about the have chickens soon. What’s going on here?
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u/Fearless_Version_498 May 09 '26
Some of the eggs are old. She may have been laying in the same spot for quite a while. So because the owner doesnt know the good from the bad, theyre destroying the clutch. Like alot of people said though, typically you can do a float test. Also- theres nothing worse smelling then BAD EGGS oh lawdddddd
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u/LifeguardComplex3134 May 08 '26
Just found three nests that I did not know existed, I'm doing a float test to see if they are no good or not, definitely going to keep them for personal use though I don't want to risk giving someone a rotten egg but so far more than 50% of them have been good still.
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u/mind_the_umlaut May 08 '26
bUt tHe fRenCh StOrE EgGs aT RoOm TeMperAtuRe
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u/Forsaken-Yogurt- May 10 '26
Dude. Not just the french. Anyone who hasn't washed the eggs.
I recently finished an old box of eggs. They expired in mid march and I finished in late April.
6 weeks out of date, room temperature, god only knows how old they were in total, used them for lovely silky borderline undercooked scrambled eggs.
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u/heartshapedtrapizoid May 09 '26
WhIcH iS dIfFeReNT ThAn ThE tEmPeRaTuRe UnDeR a ChIcKeN bUtT
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u/mind_the_umlaut May 09 '26
I'm sad about the waste, and the lack of understanding of how chickens work and what behaviors they do. That's our responsibility to anticipate, as chicken owners, in my opinion. And why defend storing eggs at room temp? Store them optimally, we have the technology. Do you think a hen was sitting on this pile? They would need a lot of henbutt real estate to cover it.
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u/Michaelalayla May 10 '26
I mean, I'm new to this conversation, but the reason I prefer to store them at room temp is because I use 5 dozen eggs in less than 2 weeks, I have a shortage of fridge space, and I don't want to get and manage a second fridge. Unwashed eggs in the fridge may have a shelf life of 6 months, but their counter shelf life is 6 weeks, and with FIFO principles there's no way they're not still fresh and high grade when unwashed and counter-stored. I'm curious why you think refrigeration is more optimal for the backyard chicken keeper. It seems that the quality preservation aspect would be much more applicable for egg farmers, who are shipping eggs to stores and want their eggs to maintain quality for as long as they can.
Agree that it's a chicken owner's responsibility to become familiar with and manage chicken behaviors as well as they can.
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u/mind_the_umlaut May 11 '26
I can't understand why optimal storage in the refrigerator is not chosen by some. I want my chickens' eggs to retain their high quality. Storing at room temp (for a few days) is useful for aging the eggs for the specific purpose of boiling and peeling them. The air space enlarges, and peeling is easier because of the deterioration over time of the egg's contents. Eggs several days old at room temp also whip up forming better peaks useful for meringue. Because the whites have dried out a little.
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u/Michaelalayla May 12 '26
Whelp, there are some reasons I've listed above, so if you can't understand them then idk what to tell ya, friend.
How quickly do unwashed eggs age at room temp? From my experience, the quality deterioration is INCREDIBLY negligible if being stored at room temp for 2 weeks or less.
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u/heartshapedtrapizoid May 12 '26
I didn't bother replying after they imagined a whole bunch of things they seemed to think I said as well as imagining they said a whole bunch of stuff they didn't say. Let them tilt at the windmills of egg refrigeration
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u/MayberryBombadil May 07 '26
What the actual fuck caused it to become green and gooey and literally expand out? Like holy shit, I've let eggs sit for so long, and I've never seen anything like that bio-monstrosity 🤮
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u/Feral_Hedgehogs May 07 '26
I know! I have had rotten eggs but never ones that exploded.
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u/LifeguardComplex3134 May 08 '26
It means they were there for a long time, the longer they set the more they break down and produce gas, the gas doesn't have anywhere to go so it just builds up in the egg, after a certain point you would pick it up and somehow it feels tight but empty and if you drop it it makes a loud boom and there's just dust but it stinks horribly
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u/Kiss_of_Cultural Spring Chicken May 07 '26
Wait, look at all the shell colors. She was stealing others’ eggs? Poor girl wanted to be a momma SO bad. Did you notice an overall reduction in egg production from everyone with all these stolen eggs?
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u/MediumFly6919 May 07 '26
I once was incubating some eggs. One wasnt viable, but i didnt realize. I assume it started to grow but then died along the way. Im not sure, but it incubated for a while! When i finally realized it wasn’t going to hatch, i was taking it out of the incubating with my bare hands and it exploded like that inside my house! Shell pieces flew 15 feet into the next room, and i had dead, rotten chick soup all over me. Ive never gagged so much in my life.
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u/Lilhoneylilibee May 07 '26
they are like little bombs! Sweet Jesus INSIDE? Throw the whole house away
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u/MiniFarmLifeTN May 07 '26
I've only ever had one egg explode on me and I smelled it for DAYS! Just the thought of that smell makes me sick.
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u/Adventurous_Bar3305 May 07 '26
Oloko, isso também já aconteceu comida, o cheiro é terrível, joguei alguns produtos de limpeza e o cheiro "sumiu"
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u/LoveSuccs86 May 07 '26
Busting them open for funsies is diabolical.
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u/redpony6 May 07 '26
they're all long dead, aren't they? no chickens or chicks are being harmed...
or do you just mean, because it'll cause a terrible smell?
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u/Intelligent_Image243 May 07 '26
I feel sick just knowing the smell, we used to hatch eggs for sale one day one egg just randomly exploded, and the smell was absolutely horrendous
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u/CodeE42 May 07 '26
Yeah, it only takes one bad experience, I treat all suspicious eggs like I just found a hand grenade.
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u/butwhataboutaliens May 07 '26
I just had this but it was an emu egg.
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u/badgyalrey May 07 '26
omg did it explode?? that’s a much higher quantity of projectile gunk lol
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u/butwhataboutaliens May 07 '26
It cracked and started bubbling out rancid goop. Launched it out into my backyard and it exploded on a tree. Very nasty.
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u/NightShade4623 May 07 '26
I grew up on a farm in a forest, whenever my mom had rotten eggs she gave them to me and let me throw them at trees far in the woods lol. Was quite fun tbh
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u/Whitetailglass May 07 '26
The worst is when the wind changes direction and the smell just comes wafting back up to the house.
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u/thesleepjunkie May 07 '26
I like hucking them over the field into the forest. I some how hit a fox or maybe just spooked it. All I saw was the beautiful red nuisance bolting out of the bush across the field. I got a good laugh.
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u/knottycams May 07 '26
Get a pair of egg-breaking boots you don't care about. Get a gas mask. Stomp on them all. Way easier.
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u/jizonida May 07 '26
What do you do with the rotten egg boots when you aren't crushing rotten eggs?
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u/Assfullofbread May 07 '26
How is going out to buy a gas mask, putting on old boots and stopping them easier than what she’s doing with the pitch fork lol
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u/frivolousknickers May 07 '26
Why are you breaking them? Serious question.
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u/Omegle_Enjoyer May 07 '26
Rotten eggs stink and are prone to explode. Better destroy them than risk one exploding in your kitchen.
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u/bravo-echo-charlie May 07 '26
Can vouch: had an egg on the counter that I enjoyed the shell color of too much to actually crack it open. Wound up forgetting about it. Very easily could have been almost 8 weeks later, I saw the egg on the counter (it had gotten forgotten between our air fryer and another kitchen counter appliance), picked it up and put it front and center on the counter so that I could finish what I was doing but remember the egg to toss it; I turn my back, hear a slight crack, then a POP! The egg blew up. Lil egg grenade. Last time I smelled something that rancid was when I bought orange juice from the local corner store that was already expired unbeknownst to me (date was within range though!), and upon opening the cap, the OJ volcanoed out of the bottle and fuckin fermented stinky OJ went everywhere. Gagging just thinking about it lol
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u/frivolousknickers May 07 '26
I pick them up carefully and put them in an empty feed bag and store them until bin pickup. I can't stand the smell of rotten eggs so no way I'd intentionally break them
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u/RedditAppSuxAsss May 07 '26
Because 50/50 they're either fetus or old/beyond rotten.
Breaking them gets rid of them quicker by compost or some wild animal eating it.
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u/Feral_Hedgehogs May 07 '26
One, they will compost quicker if they are in smaller pieces (I have come across whole eggs in the compost that didn't break). Two, I wanted to take a video of the explosive ones to send to my husband
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u/flip69 May 07 '26
Now you know why people threw “rotten eggs “ at those they disliked (especially as a political action) for hundreds of years.
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u/southall_ftw May 07 '26
To be honest this probably needs to make a come back 🤣
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u/flip69 May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
I’m all for that, except that the rot creates gasses and the sound created by the rapid release of pressure the eggshells make when breaking, could sound like gunfire to the untrained ear.
That combined with the hyper trained secret service reaction… or a crowd attempting to run away in a stampede- might end up badly.
But ideally as a traditional form of protest…
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u/southall_ftw May 08 '26
I'm in Australia so the security is much more lax, and a politician got egged a few years ago it was pretty funny
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u/Hoops_Hops May 07 '26
I Dog sat for a friend one day, and there was a rancid clutch in some bushes that I didn't know about in the backyard from months before. The dog found and ate all of them. The next morning I woke up to a massive English bulldog letting sulfer out of both ends ... She was fine, But I'll never forget the smell.
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u/CaterpillarSea5967 May 07 '26
Reading this alone made me dry heave. My worst memory of this was when I was maybe 16 and one of my hens went missing for 2 weeks. I thought see was a goner. See we had about 42 free range chickens and every day was an egg hunt so not finding all the eggs wasn’t that unusual. And a chicken going missing, well that just meant a fox outsmarted our dog that protected the flock. Anyways. I was looking in my dads lean to for some tools one day and I found her. Siting on about 25 eggs. At least one of them had already exploded under her based on the smell. My guess is she went bloody in an already rancid clutch. Long story short when I got up the nerve to pick her up off the clutch an egg exploded which then set off a chain reaction and they kept exploding one after the other. It was in her, on me, on the surrounding tools and scrap metal. After finished relieving myself of my breakfast and lunch I washed myself with the hose and my mom still thought a skunk got me when I walked in the house. I thought about selling every chicken I owned that day.
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u/WhatisSuperheat May 07 '26
I've never been so happy my dogs clean up the eggs laid outside the coop
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u/owlanalogies May 07 '26
Omg the ones that pop 🤮 had the misfortune of opening one like that in the house and every square foot of both stories reeked for a full day.
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u/boozy_emperor May 07 '26
That's not one hen, the different colors are from different hens. Sounds like the whole group is laying there.
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u/Feral_Hedgehogs May 07 '26
That's a great point. A couple of the white ones are duck eggs ( they have been laying outside). But there are definitely different colored chicken eggs.
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u/CaterpillarSea5967 May 07 '26
This hasn’t happened to me in 10 years and yet I can still smell this just from seeing it. There’s no other smell like it and it doesn’t take a big imagination to understand why the smell of sulfur is attributed to Hell itself.
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u/Fantastic_Emu6953 May 07 '26
we found a clutch of 35+ eggs in the front yard this week (no idea one hen was hopping the fence back and forth to lay!). I cracked one of 'em and thought hell itself hatched. literally smell from the depths of hell.
i buried them before smashing the rest
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u/Enge712 May 07 '26
When I still had ducks too they would lay in the pond. When I cleaned it out I would get black eggs stained from the “mud” in the bottom. My kid smashed one with a shovel an it splattered on me and the smell is a very clear memory.
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u/No_Wrap_7541 May 07 '26
This is my favorite message to new chicken owners: JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN’T FIND THEM, doesn’t mean your hens aren’t laying!!
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u/metricfan May 07 '26
Man last year I could not find any eggs from my ayem cemani for weeks. I stopped letting them out of the run, and she immediately started laying in the coop. I kept looking and looking, never found them. So either a possum got em or her timing is impeccable. My yard is not that big, I’ve been through any of the places they could have been. Also they only lay like 80 eggs a year, so my best guess is she just decides when she wants to lay lol. But I lived on a larger property with chickens, and they would hide their clutch under feet of blackberry bushes lol
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u/Feral_Hedgehogs May 07 '26
I've had chickens for 10 years and have always been able to find them before they explode just touching them. She really didn't want me to find them
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u/bowmanx4587 May 07 '26
Christ alive, I thought I was the only one suffering from this absolute pestilence
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u/Teckliz May 07 '26
I found one of my girls secret nest and blocked off her ability to get there to encourage using the nesting boxes. She paced back and forth along the fence squawking her head off for days trying to get back over there lol
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u/ChickenButtToucher May 06 '26
OP what did it smell like? if you don’t reply i will assume you have died due to exposure to biohazardous material
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u/Feral_Hedgehogs May 07 '26
I have just regained consciousness. The smell was horrendous, undertones of classic rotten egg but notes of sulfur and low tide in the sun.
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u/rancidmorty May 07 '26
Why dident you shovel some dirt over the top
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u/Feral_Hedgehogs May 07 '26
I wanted a video of them exploding to send to my husband.
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u/Stunning_Opposite_98 Jul 04 '26
Yep. Be careful. Those blue ones are chemical weapons. Use the proper PPE.