This is a part of "Milk comes from cows an other such nonsense-a practical guide to homesteading in the now! ©SRGD 2010
For the most part eggs are very hard to store. Fresh eggs from you very own chickens will keep for up to six months with little to no care what so ever. When I save eggs this way the thing I have to watch out for is humidity which in reality is the killer of all eggs. I long term store my eggs in the own fridge set at 50 degrees and place a pan of clean water on the bottom shelf which is changed out with fresh water once a week. This helps to keep the eggs from drying out. Another thing I do is to not wash the eggs, the eggs have there very own natural protection from most germs and bacteria. When store eggs for eating or hatching always store with the pointy end down and make sure your cartons are very clean.
Other method we are using for the first time this year is Brining eggs, now this is great if you are living off grid or can not spare fridge space, but has it's own sets of draw backs as the eggs are very salted and are best if used in baking other other cooking.
So here is what you will need to brine eggs.
Some clean wide mouth jars, I use half gallon mason jars, but you could use quarts if you wanted too, just make sure they are the wide mouth kind so you can get the eggs back out.
Pickling salt, you could use any none iodized salt that you wanted to including Utah salt and Dead Sea salt to name a few. You will need 1/8 pound of salt by weight, not volume, this is very import and should be done using exact measurements.
A dozen egg really fresh eggs, still warm from the chicken are the best but no older than one day.
A non reactive pot that holds at least a gallon.
A quart of non chlorinated water...if you have well water great!
Now that you have everything, let get started with the pot and heat up the quart of water, now if you are using pickling salt or Dead Sea salt you will not have to heat up the water and you can just mix it in and skip this step.
While the brine mix is cooling down you can get the jars ready with the eggs.
Before I put the eggs in the jars I check them for any tiny crack which could mess the whole batch up. I do this using a strong flashlight in a cardboard box and than candle one more time using a camera with a sepia or negative photo setting. On a negative or even in sepia one can see if an egg is fertile, see tiny cracks or imperfection that would make it unusable.
Now I place the eggs in the glass care with great care, now is not the time to be chasing kids or talking on the phone. Stack eggs to just under the top, the amount of eggs in the jar of course depends on the size of the egg.
Ok we are ready to add the cooled off brine to the eggs by pouring in over the top of the eggs and making sure that all eggs are covered and that the brine goes up to the brim of the glass jar. Next place the clean lid on the top and tighten as normal. With that done you are ready to store your eggs. They should be placed in a cool place and you need to wait three weeks before you can use them, this gives the salt proper time to preserve the eggs. These eggs should last at least 6 months.