Is it ok to eat an egg that was laid by a hen on the floor of the coop instead of the nesting box?

Question

I read somewhere when I first got chickens that you should discard any eggs not laid in the nesting box. I have always thrown those away but got to thinking that people that have free range chickens, eat the eggs they find wherever they find them. Do I still need to discard these or can I start eating them?

Answer 1

but got to thinking that people that have free range chickens, eat the eggs they find wherever they find them.

Your reasoning is correct if you are sure that the egg is coming from your chicken.

When I was a kid we raised chickens.

During winter months they were in a little cage, and their eggs would be laid just there.

During summer we would bring them to our summer house in the countryside, and they would be free to roam around for part of the day. Most of the times they would lay their eggs inside the coop, because that was their "nest", but sometimes it happened that an egg would be laid somewhere else.

Unless it was cracked, we would not discard it, because there was no other bird who could lay those eggs around.

I can imagine that picking a random egg laid in the wild by an unknown bird might not be always safe.