Best Egg Baskets
Coming in a close second to baking sourdough bread, backyard chickens are the quarantine trend everyone is talking about. Whether you’ve been rearing chickens in your backyard for years, or have just jumped on the chicken bandwagon, having a good quality and thoughtfully designed egg basket is essential for any chicken parent. Collecting your eggs and carefully placing them in a protective egg basket is the best way to ensure your eggs make it from the hen house to your omelet without any casualties along the way. Even if you’re not interested in actually raising chickens but want your friends to think you do, storing your eggs in a beautiful egg basket will have everyone fooled in no time.
Our Top Picks For The Best Egg Baskets
Overall Top Choice – Little Giant Large Egg Basket
This basket is large, sturdy and can hold up to eight dozen eggs!
The Little Giant Large Egg Basket Basket is designed to safely and securely hold the eggs you have collected from your hens. The wire design allows you to easily spray down your eggs, cool them, and dry them with little effort. The coil design allows debris to easily fall out of the basket while keeping your eggs secure. This basket is constructed using heavy-duty coated wire that will protect it from corrosion, and the sturdy construction and welded joints can withstand the weight of up to eight dozen eggs! As an added bonus, there is a large and convenient carrying handle that makes this basket particularly secure and easy to carry.
Pros
- Large capacity that can accommodate up to eight dozen eggs
- Sturdy construction with welded joints and coated wire to prevent rust
- Sturdy carrying handle
Cons
- This basket is quite large, and some customers prefer the smaller model
Best Petit Egg Basket – Chicken Ware Manufacturing Chicken Egg Basket
This colorful little egg basket is just over five inches tall and can accommodate up to two dozen eggs.
The Chicken Ware Manufacturing Chicken Egg Basket is easy on the eyes with its fun, brightly colored vinyl-coated wire that is also very practical and rust-resistant.
You can use this little basket to gather and easily rinse/dry up to two dozen eggs. The construction of this basket is quite sturdy with heavy-duty vinyl-coated wire that is rust-resistant and more gentle on the eggs than metal.
Pros
- Fun bright green color
- Sturdy with vinyl-coated wire
Cons
- Some customers find the thin handle uncomfortable
Best Designer Chicken Basket – Farmhouse Style Metal Wire Chicken Design Egg Basket
This fun chicken shaped basket will look incredible on your counter and comes in a variety of colors including white and gold.
The Farmhouse Style Metal Wire Chicken Design Egg Basket has a fun decorative design that will make a statement in any kitchen. This egg basket can be used to collect and store eggs, and when it’s not in use, act as a fun decoration on your kitchen counter.
The chicken wings can be lifted up to act as a handle to help you easily bring eggs to the kitchen from the henhouse. Depending on the size of your eggs, this basket can hold up to a dozen eggs at a time.
Pros
- Fun chicken design that stands out from the other baskets on the market
- The wings can be lifted to be used as a handle
Cons
- The metal wires are not coated so you have to be careful when transporting the eggs
- The basket can only hold about a dozen eggs depending on the size of the eggs
Best Multi-Purpose Egg Basket – DII Chicken Wire Basket
This basket has a removable and washable liner and can be purchased in multiples to be used for storage around the house, in addition to collecting eggs.
The DII Chicken Wire Basket has a removable liner that comes in many different patterns and colors. This basket can accommodate dozens of eggs, or other things like fruits, vegetables, canned foods – whatever you can dream up!
This basket is easy to clean with its poly-cotton blend fabric liner that can be tossed in the washing machine without losing its size and shape. The basket itself is also easy to clean, just wipe it with a damp cloth.
This easy to carry basket has two convenient handles so you can securely transport your eggs in from the backyard.
Pros
- Removable and washable liner
- Can be used to store all kinds of things
- Double handles for extra stability
Cons
- Despite being advertised as large, some customers find them to be a little more on the small side
How To Raise Backyard Chickens
Chickens are wonderful, low maintenance animals that can produce delish eggs as a thank you for your hospitality.
If you’re interested in raising chickens in your backyard, make sure to pay attention to city bylaws in order to ensure you’re allowed to do so. Once you have the bylaws figured out, you’ll need to make sure you have a chicken coop for the chickens to roost in at night. Chicken coops are pretty easy to construct (if you have very basic carpentry skills), or, you can purchase one online or in some hardware stores (minimal construction is usually required). A chicken coop is a small roofed shelter with an elevated roosting bar for the chickens to perch on at night (they like being up off the ground).
Your coop is going to need great ventilation and have nesting boxes where the hens can safely lay their eggs. Make sure your chicken coop is very secure with a sturdy floor so that predators cannot get in. Predators include coyotes, foxes, skunks, raccoons, cats, dogs, snakes and various other animals depending on where you live. If you choose to own and raise chickens it is your responsibility to ensure they are safe from predators while in their coop at night.
If you live in the city, in addition to a coop you will also want to consider building a chicken run so that your chickens have an enclosed outdoor space to explore during the day, and don’t end up wandering onto the road, or into a neighbor’s yard.
Be prepared, chickens poop a lot so owning chickens means cleaning up lots of poop, and there is no way around that!
What Should You Feed Your Chicken?
Chickens need access to fresh water at all times, this is very important. You can purchase special water containers for chickens online, or at feed stores in more rural areas. A large metal container is a great choice because many have an attractive design, and will stay full for a long time.
If you want your chicken to stay nice and healthy you need to make sure that they are eating enough protein, minerals and grit. You can ensure your chickens have proper nutrition by purchasing layered chicken pellets online or at a feed store. Chicken food pellets contain all of the nutrition hens need in order to ensure that they can produce eggs. Chickens also like to snack on things they find outside, especially bugs! This is a great added bonus for chicken owners. Chickens especially love mosquitos, worms and other garden pests like grasshoppers.
Where Do You Buy Chickens?
Chickens come in many breeds, and different breeds come with different benefits. The first step in becoming a chicken parent comes down to figuring out what breeds, and ages, of chickens you would like. Some breeds are hardier than others, and others lay eggs of various sizes and colors. These are all things to consider when researching your new chickens. Once you’ve settled on the breeds and ages you can begin your research online, or at a local feed store to find someone local with chickens for sale. Although chickens are available at any time of year, summer and fall are the best times to find a wide variety of chickens.
Usually, people purchase chicks and raise them until they are an appropriate age to lay eggs (at least six months or older). If you’re not interested in waiting, however, you can purchase chickens that are already at an egg-laying age, but prepare to pay more for older chickens.
Will Chickens Lay Eggs All Year?
Expect your chickens to go through a moult each year (typically in the fall). Moulting is when the chicken sheds its feathers and stops laying eggs for a short period of time (usually six to twelve weeks).
Another thing to keep in mind is that chickens need at least 14 hours of sun per day in order to lay an egg, so in the winter they will not produce as many eggs as they will in spring/summer/fall. Sometimes they will not produce any eggs during the winter.
How Do You Store Farm Fresh Eggs?
Your farm fresh eggs do not require refrigeration, but just remember that one day at room temperature is equivalent to about one week of having eggs in the fridge, so if you have a lot of eggs, or aren’t planning on using them quickly, you should probably just refrigerate them to be safe. It is said that eggs that are kept in the fridge have about seven times the shelf life of room temperature eggs.
How Do You Clean Fresh Chicken Eggs?
To wash your chicken eggs, or to not wash your chicken eggs. That is the question. There is a lot of debate surrounding this topic and some people strongly believe that you should never wash a fresh egg because when the egg is laid there is a natural protective coating on the egg called “bloom”. This coating is there to keep bacteria out of the fresh egg, and some believe that washing the egg and removing this bloom can actually contribute to contamination. If you decide that you do indeed want to wash your fresh chicken eggs, a great way to do it is to simply rinse the eggs under your tap with warm water, or spray them down with warm water while they’re in a washer flat or wire basket. Once the eggs have air dried you can give them a wipe with a dry paper towel one at a time and place them into a clean basket or egg flat. Never immerse or soak a chicken egg in water.
Can You Eat An Egg Right After It’s Laid?
The fresher the egg, the better! There’s no harm in eating a freshly laid egg and in fact, eating your eggs fresh will always taste better. With that said, farm fresh eggs can last for up to a month or more in the fridge, and two weeks or more on the counter, so there’s really no rush.
Can A Chicken Fly Away?
Usually, chickens aren’t big on flying, but they can fly, and they can jump really high with ease. If your chickens are roaming free during the day and you’re relying on a fence to keep them securely in your yard, you will need to make sure that said fence is at least 6ft high or they will jump/flutter right over it with ease. Some people opt to clip their chickens’ wings to prevent them from flying, but in my humble opinion, the best solution is to simply build them a wire covered chicken run so you don’t have to worry about them escaping.
Final Thoughts
If you’re open to the responsibility of raising and caring for chickens you will be graciously rewarded with delish farm fresh eggs. Eggs are incredibly fragile and having a sturdy egg basket is a must for ensuring they make it from the hen house to your kitchen. We hope that this list of our top picks for best egg baskets will make it much easier for you to find the right basket for you!