Use a plastic egg storage tray for best results when storing your chicken eggs for many months.
It doesn’t seem possible, but storage in plastic or styrofoam egg cartons makes a big difference in the quality of the egg over the long haul.
At first I didn’t believe it would make a difference because eggs in the refrigerator are exposed to exactly the same environment.
It’s true, they are, but only from a standpoint of the ambient environment. Inside the carton it can be a different situation.
When it comes to their micro-environment, eggs in sytrofoam or plastic are being held in place by a material that doesn’t interact with the egg shell.
That’s not the case with the traditional cardboard containers.
A cardboard egg carton creates an interaction with the eggs that one might not think of. Contact with the cardboard wicks away moisture from the egg, right through the shell, thus having a drying effect on the egg over many months.
If you use a plastic egg storage tray or one made of styrofoam, this wicking action doesn’t occur, and your eggs will stay much fresher over the long haul than they will if they are stored in cardboard containers where the egg shell has direct contact with the cardboard.
If you’re only storing your eggs for a month or two, then I wouldn’t be concerned about it, but if you hope to have eggs in cold storage for three months or more, then you’ll want to invest in some plastic or styrofoam egg cartons
to maximize the storage time for your chicken eggs.
Since egg cartons will last many years with reasonable care, and they’re not expensive to begin with, the investment necessary to support longer term storage of eggs isn’t much at all.