How often to collect eggs, keep nests clean, deal with dirty eggs, grade by size, store eggs in Ghana's heat and cut breakages on the way to the buyer.
Halaal Farms Ghana team4 October 2026 · 12 min read
An egg leaves the hen at about 41°C, slightly damp, with thousands of fine pores running through its shell. Over the next few minutes the outer coating dries into a thin seal, and as the egg cools its contents shrink and a small air cell forms at the blunt end. From that moment the egg can only lose quality. It cannot gain any. Every hour in a hot nest, every knock in a bucket, every day in a store under an iron roof takes a little away.
The farmer's job between the nest and the buyer is therefore to slow that loss and avoid damage. None of it needs expensive equipment. It needs a timetable, clean nests, decent trays, a cool corner and a habit of counting what gets broken.
An egg left in a nest is sat on by the next hen and the one after. It stays warm for hours when it should be cooling. It is walked on by dirty feet, pushed against other eggs and, sooner or later, cracked. A cracked egg in a nest is the start of something worse. Hens taste the contents, learn that eggs are food, and egg eating spreads through the pen.
In cages the egg rolls out of reach, but it still sits in the open tray in the heat of the house, collecting dust, and later eggs roll into it. Shell-to-shell collisions on a crowded tray produce hairline cracks that you only discover when the buyer complains.
Hens lay most of their eggs in the first five or six hours of their day. If the lights come on before dawn, or the flock wakes at first light, the bulk of the day's eggs have been laid by late morning. Collections should be concentrated there.
| System | Suggested rounds | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Deep litter with nest boxes | About 8 am, 10 am, 12 noon and 3 to 4 pm | Nests fill fast in the morning. The last round clears the house before night. |
| Cages | About 10 am, 1 pm and 4 pm | Trays must not overfill, and eggs should leave the heat of the house. |
| New pullets, first four weeks of lay | Add extra walks through the house for floor eggs | A floor egg left lying invites other hens to lay beside it. |
| Very hot days | Add a round | Eggs in a house above 30°C age quickly. |
Fix the times and keep to them. Regular rounds also make your daily egg count comparable from one day to the next. Never leave eggs in the house overnight. They are warm for another twelve hours and they are there for rats and snakes.
Most dirty eggs are made in the nest, so cleanliness starts there.
For floor eggs, act in the first weeks of lay. Walk the house often, pick up every floor egg, and lift any pullet you find settling in a corner into a nest. Put extra light into dark corners and under equipment, where hens are tempted to lay.
The bucket and the basin are the biggest avoidable cause of cracks on small farms. Eggs piled ten deep press on the ones at the bottom, and each new egg lands on shell. Carry egg trays into the house and place each egg directly in a cell, pointed end down.
Sort soiled eggs into two groups. Lightly marked eggs, with a spot of droppings or a smear of dust, can be dry-cleaned. Rub the mark off gently with a dry abrasive pad, fine sandpaper or a clean dry cloth, and change the pad often. Heavily soiled eggs, and any egg smeared with the contents of a broken one, should not go to customers. Use the sound ones promptly at home, cooked through, and discard the rest.
Washing seems the obvious answer and usually makes matters worse. Two things go wrong. Water removes the natural coating that seals the pores. And if the water is cooler than the egg, the contents contract and draw water, with whatever bacteria it carries, through the shell. An egg washed in a bowl of cold water with fifty others looks clean and spoils faster than a dirty one.
Commercial egg washing avoids this with clean running water kept noticeably warmer than the eggs, an approved sanitiser, immediate drying and cold storage afterwards. Without all four, do not wash. Never soak eggs, and never wipe a batch with the same wet rag.
Cracked eggs are a separate product. A crack is an open door for bacteria. Keep cracked eggs cool, sell them the same day at a lower price to buyers who will cook them at once, or use them at home. Throw away leakers. Never hide cracked eggs in the middle of a tray. One leaking egg glues the tray to the one below and costs you the customer.
Before size, take out the eggs that should not be in a first-grade tray: cracked, thin-shelled, badly misshapen, rough or heavily stained. Hairline cracks are invisible in daylight. In a dim room, hold each egg, or a few at a time, against a strong torch and the cracks show as bright lines. The same light shows the air cell at the blunt end. In a fresh egg it is shallow, a few millimetres deep, and it grows as the egg ages, so candling a sample is also a check on how long eggs are sitting in your store.
If the share of thin or misshapen shells is rising, the cause is in the flock and not in the handling. Our guide to thin shells, soft shells and misshapen eggs goes through the causes.
In Ghanaian markets eggs are mostly traded by the crate of 30 as small, medium, large and jumbo, judged by eye. Judging by eye drifts, and arguments follow. A kitchen scale that reads to the gram settles it. Weight bands differ between countries. As a reference, the bands used in the European Union are shown below. Agree your own with your regular buyers, write them down and hold to them.
| Grade (EU reference) | Weight of one egg |
|---|---|
| Small | Under 53 grams |
| Medium | 53 to under 63 grams |
| Large | 63 to under 73 grams |
| Extra large | 73 grams and over |
You do not need to weigh every egg. Weigh a few dozen until you have a reference egg at each boundary, keep those beside the grading table, and check doubtful eggs on the scale. A young flock lays mostly small and medium eggs for its first couple of months, and the proportion of large rises as the hens age.
Size grading pays in two ways. Buyers who want large eggs will pay for a tray that is all large, and small eggs can be priced to move quickly instead of dragging down a mixed tray. The sums are in how to price your eggs and broilers. The second gain is mechanical. A tray of even-sized eggs carries the tray above on all thirty eggs. In a mixed tray, the few big eggs stand proud, take the whole load and crack. Very large and double-yolked eggs should always have their own tray, on top of the stack.
A paper pulp tray that has gone soft, torn or damp no longer supports the eggs. Throw it out. Plastic trays cost more, last for years and can be washed and disinfected.
Trays are also one of the ways disease and mites travel between farms. A tray that has been to market has sat beside trays from many other farms and comes home carrying their dust and droppings. Do not bring used paper trays back into the egg store or the poultry house, and do not accept other people's trays in exchange for yours. Send eggs out in new paper trays, or in plastic trays that are washed and disinfected on return before they come near the birds. The reasoning is the same as for crates and visitors in our list of cheap biosecurity measures for small farms.
Inside a stored egg, three things happen. Water evaporates through the shell and the air cell grows. The thick white thins and spreads. The membrane around the yolk weakens, so the yolk flattens and breaks easily in the pan. All three speed up with temperature. As a rule of thumb, a day in a hot room ages an egg about as much as several days in a refrigerator.
The ideal store is cool and steady, around 10 to 15°C, with moderately humid air. Few small farms have that. What every farm can do is avoid the worst and take the practical steps below.
If cocks run with your hens, the eggs are fertile, and in a warm store the embryo can begin to develop, which customers find when they crack the egg. A table-egg flock needs no cocks. Eggs kept for incubation follow different rules on temperature, position and length of storage, set out in selecting and storing hatching eggs.
There is no single figure, because it depends on temperature and on how clean and sound the shell was to begin with. The table gives approximate guidance for eating quality, assuming clean, uncracked eggs.
| Where the egg is kept | Approximate time it stays in good condition |
|---|---|
| Ordinary room in Ghana, around 28 to 32°C | About one to two weeks |
| Cool store, around 15°C | About three to four weeks |
| Refrigerator, around 4 to 7°C | Four to five weeks or longer |
For a farm storing at room temperature, the working rule is to have eggs off the farm within a week of lay, sooner in the hottest months. That leaves the trader and the household a few days each. If eggs are regularly older than that when they leave, you have a marketing problem, and building regular outlets is the answer. See supplying eggs to shops, schools and hotels.
Most transport breakage is decided before the vehicle moves.
You cannot reduce a loss you have not measured. Add four lines to the daily egg record: floor eggs, dirty eggs, eggs cracked at collection, and eggs cracked at grading and packing. On each delivery note, record breakages on arrival. After two weeks you will know your own baseline and where most of the loss occurs. Fix the biggest line first, then measure again. You can see what each lost crate does to the margin in the poultry profit calculator.
Halaal Farms Ghana supplies table eggs, fertile hatching eggs and layer day-old chicks from Opeikuma, Kasoa, with delivery to all 16 regions. For eggs, chicks or advice on handling the eggs your own flock lays, call 024 915 1503 or send the order form. Price and delivery cost are confirmed before you pay.
Yes, if they can stay there until they are used. At fridge temperature eggs keep their quality for four to five weeks, far longer than on a kitchen shelf. What harms them is moving in and out. Cold eggs brought into warm, humid air become wet with condensation, which helps bacteria and mould get through the shell.
Put it in a bowl of water. A fresh egg lies flat on the bottom. An egg one to two weeks old tilts or stands on its point because the air cell has grown. An egg that floats is old and should be thrown away. Broken onto a plate, a fresh egg has a high, rounded yolk and a thick white that holds together.
Look at what the hens carry in on their feet. Wet litter around drinkers and in front of the nests is the usual cause. Other causes are hens sleeping in the nests at night, too few nests so that hens lay on the floor, loose droppings from a feed or health problem, and late collection that leaves eggs to be walked on.
The pointed end. The air cell is at the blunt end, and keeping it uppermost holds the yolk near the centre of the egg and stops the air cell from shifting or breaking loose. Eggs packed this way keep better and travel better. It also puts the stronger, narrow end of the shell at the bottom where the load is carried.
Written by the Halaal Farms Ghana team. We hatch and import day-old chicks at Opeikuma, Kasoa, and deliver to all 16 regions. This article is general guidance for farmers. For diagnosis and treatment of sick birds, speak to a vet or your district veterinary office.
Feathers on the floor and fewer eggs in the trays usually mean an older flock is moulting. Here is how to confirm it, feed through it and decide whether a second laying cycle pays.
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