Forever. If they are older, I will use the float test to check them which is to put them in a bowl of cold water that is about 2x higher than the egg. If the whole egg floats to the top, discard it.

Supposedly, eggs can get mold inside, but I've never seen one.

Same here, we use them til they are gone, I've never even looked at an expiration date on the eggs.

Jan tells me that I eat more eggs than a chicken hawk...

In addition to the 3 or 4 eggs I have for breakfast every morning, I make about 24 to 30 boiled eggs a week;

Sometimes I peel and slice an egg and put it on my garden salad for dinner

Sometimes its a couple boiled eggs, a chunk of cheddar cheese and some crackers as a snack,

Sometimes I peel 3 or 4 and make egg salad for a sandwich.

Sometimes I peel 2 or 3 and make deviled eggs on the side for supper

And when I have eggs that I suspect are getting old, I boil them, peel them and drop them in my perpetual 1 gallon Pickled egg jar.

And when I go out on a photo walkabout I take a small thermos of coffee, a couple boiled eggs, some cheddar or swiss cheese, a small bag of crackers and a 1/4lb of raisins as my trail lunch.

I guess to answer your question, eggs never get old enough to worry about here......LOL

So if they are 2 months past the date and don't smell like...well...rotten eggs, they should be ok.

Lazypup, I never heard of anyone eating that many eggs!!! I don't eat that many in a year.

Side question: When did people start refrigerating eggs? They're not cool while the hen is sitting on them or until someone retrieves them from under her. Surely people kept eggs for some period of time before eating them, before there was refrigeration.

Sorry. I'm going through my Four-Year-Old "Why?" stage again. Just looked up when *hinges* were first known to exist. (1600 BC, Turkey)

I don't imagine my grandparents refrigerated eggs. They gathered em up, put em in bowl and set the bowl on the counter or table. But then, there were 12 kids so they didn't last more than a day. I'm sure this is pretty much the case with anyone up thru the 30's and 40's when those twelve had smaller families.

I do bulk shopping every 5 to 6 weeks and buy 3 dozen eggs, pop em in the fridge and use them until the next shopping trip. There's only one of me and I keep them stored on a shelf where the temps are cooler and not in the door. Never had a problem.

I keep them a bit past but I have definitely cracked open an egg that had gross mold in it and some that were just almost dried up and very icky. If they are past date I ALWAYS crack them into a cup before using to make sure it looks and smells ok and don't ruin anything by cracking it directly into anything else.

lazypup you might want to go to Costco, I have started buying boiled and peeled eggs there they are 24 to a pack sealed in 6 egg packs and are only $3 something. To me that is a great deal. I now use a lot more boiled eggs.

found this info in a google search
"Dates on Egg Cartons
Use of either a "Sell-By" or "Expiration" (EXP) date is not federally required, but may be State required, as defined by the egg laws in the State where the eggs are marketed. Some State egg laws do not allow the use of a "sell-by" date.

Many eggs reach stores only a few days after the hen lays them. Egg cartons with the USDA grade shield on them must display the "pack date" (the day that the eggs were washed, graded, and placed in the carton). The number is a three-digit code that represents the consecutive day of the year (the "Julian Date") starting with January 1 as 001 and ending with December 31 as 365. When a "sell-by" date appears on a carton bearing the USDA grade shield, the code date may not exceed 45 days from the date of pack.

Always purchase eggs before the "Sell-By" or "EXP" date on the carton. After the eggs reach home, refrigerate the eggs in their original carton and place them in the coldest part of the refrigerator, not in the door. For best quality, use eggs within 3 to 5 weeks of the date you purchase them. The "sell-by" date will usually expire during that length of time, but the eggs are perfectly safe to use."

An eff is still fresh enough to hatch at 10 days old. I don't throw away any eggs because of the sell by date....Even I do the occasional convenience buy but I can't imagine the buying of boiled eggs.

I never eat them past the due date. DH is a stickler and checks due dates on everything.

a convenience to some may be a blessing to others, with limited use of my hands, tasks that seem simple to some are not to myself and others. I would have to have my husband assist me to peel the eggs. Being able to purchase them all pre boiled and peeled allows me some of the freedom I once had and can make some of our fave dishes that use boiled eggs.

I only wish I could consider it just a convenience these days.
I take the small blessing where I can find them ;-)

Yes, Raven, and those small conveniences really mean a lot to many people! Handy for moms to put in lunchboxes too probably.

Heather, there is no "due date" on eggs in CA--it's a "sell by" date.

I am another that doesn't go by the "sell by" date and I keep the eggs until they are done - usually 3 weeks past the date on the carton.

My neighbour has been having a hard time the past few months so I have been helping her out by taking meals over, fruit, etc. She told me she needed eggs and had just tossed a carton in the garbage because it was a day past the sell by date. She said she had just put them in the garbage so I went to get them out but they were all broken. I told her the sell by date is for the stores - and food is usually good some time after the date unless it smells bad or has mould on it. Even milk which I am not a big drinker of, I let it go past the date and as soon as it smells bad I dump it. I hate wasting food.

Anne

When I was a kid on the farm we had two chicken houses that housed about 300 Rhode Island Reds and Leghorn Chickens. (They are about two to three times the size of the chickens you buy in the grocery store because commercial meat chickens are only 44 days old when they go to the slaughter house)

The Chicken houses were plain wooden bldgs about 24' square with an 8ft ceiling on the front side and a low pitched flat roof (abt 3/12pitch)covered with tarpaper. There was a little sliding door on the front of the bldg that allowed the chickens to go out into a 24 x 30 fenced run area during the day.

Inside it was just one big room with about 24 nesting boxes built against the far wall, and it had windows on thr front side facing the fenced area. On the back wall it had 2x4's attached from the wall joists down to the floor at about a 30deg angle and there was 6 rows of 2x4's running horizontally that the chickens used for roosts at night. Across the middle of the room there was a feeding trough for laying mash (chicken feed) and near the front wall another small trough for crushed oyster shell, (needed by the chickens to provide grit in their gizzards). We had five 3gal chicken waterers sitting on the floor between the feeding trough and the front wall. Every morning and again in the evening one of us boys had to carry water about 200yds from the spring to the chicken house and fill the waterers, then carry a 50lb bag of laying mash about 300yds from the barn to the chicken house and fill the feeding trough. We would then carefully collect about 200 to 250 eggs from the nesting boxes and put them in a water bucket and carry them to the house. (keep in mind that this was in addition to our duties of milking 35 cows then feeding all the cows, 13 draft horses, and 15 or 20 huge hogs, and all of that had to be done before we could sit down to breakfast at 9am.

Once the eggs were at the house we had to load the eggs in the egg washer. Now for those who have never seen an egg washer it is a little machine that has a round plate on top about 12" in diameter. You put a galvanized bucket of water on top of the machine, then the eggs are placed in a wire basket that will just fit in the bucket. Put about two tbsp of laundry detergent in the water and turn the machine on. The machine gently rotated about 2" in one direction, then reversed and rotated 2" in the other direction repeating the cycle about 20 times a minute, which just gently rocked the eggs in the water.

As soon as we were done eating breakfast the wire rack of eggs was lifted out of the washer and the eggs were rinse with cold water, then put in a cardboard egg crate that held about 48doz eggs and it sat on the floor in the dining room until Grandpa would take the eggs to the egg packers about twice a week and sometimes he took eggs to the Amish Country Store where they just put them in a large wicker basket on the counter. (Usually we sent the white eggs to the packers and the brown eggs to the Amish Store).

In addition to those chickens we had about 500 Bantam chickens that free ranged around the barnyard, and we had to continually look for their nests in and around the barn. Bantams are smaller chickens and they produce eggs that are about the size of those sold as small eggs in the store. We did not sell Banty eggs so when we found banty eggs they were free game to eat as many as you want. My personal record for eggs at one sitting was 13 fried sunny side up, with a side of homefries, home made bread with lots of butter & jam and coffee..But my brother outdid me with 17.

Our real treats came in the spring time when our geese and ducks were laying. I love two or three goose eggs for breakfast.

Here is a picture of a Rhode Island Red Rooster & Hen, although the hen in the picture is very small. The hens get as big as the roosters. To see a size reference note the bench in the background. That is standard size garden bench. (Commercial meat chickens are 8lbs on the hoof when they dress them and they will yeild about 3 to 4 lbs dressed weight, the mature Rhode Islands will dress out at 8 to 9lbs)

There's only three of us, me, DH and DD (age 23) so we go thru a dozen eggs pretty quickly. I don't worry about the sell-by date. I've used eggs that were "expired" and no one got sick.

Richard, that's very informative. You had a lot of work to do, growing up. I can remember my grandmas hen house, and I was always afraid to reach under the chicken for the eggs! Good pic, too!

I used to have a hen house and lots of chickens. I never liked having to go out before dusk to shut them up and then out early to let them out. I did enjoy feeding and gathering the eggs though.

Sue