Pickled Silkie Eggs

Pickled silkie eggs.
Oh the horror! The humanity!
The... the... the... yummy goodness!!!!

So what, you ask, is a silkie and why are the eggs different? Basically a silkie is an ancient breed of chicken that has feather issues that make them look fuzzy, in the States they are bantam sized. These are a few of our silkies. See? Fuzzy.Being as they are smaller chickens they produce smaller eggs. In the picture below you shall find eggs, clockwise from top center eggs are laid by Ezzy, Red, Joe, Bertha, Freak, Panic and Mayhem. The one in the center, the little one, was laid by Sweeny, the girl in the front in the picture above.

Now.... about those pickled eggs. Why pickle them? Why not? I have yet to have a silkie decide she needs to set eggs so I save them for a week, just in case. Every Sunday I take all the eggs from the previous week, hard boil them and pickle them. I get 3 eggs a day on average from my 5 silkie girls, giving me around 18 + a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
Let's start this how to with the jar. I will use nearly any glass jar that I can close air tight. In today's case it's a roasted peanut jar. This is one of the larger ones, right at a quart, will be a nice fit for 18 eggs. We shall follow the jar on this journey.

So, while those eggs are boiling, get your apple cider vinegar warmed up. I use 2 cups with 1/2 tsp pickling salt (not iodized salt please), and 1 tsp sugar, in a sauce pan over a medium low burner. I put the spices in the jar itself. 1 Tbsp onion flakes, 1 Tbsp whole pickling spice (that's this week's recipe, I vary what I use/add, no two batches are the same with the exception of the pickling spice).
Once the eggs are boiled and peeled and still warm, pack them in the jar, just don't cram them in and break them. I just drop them in as I unpeel and rinse them, no shells wanted in the jar.
Then you pour the warm vinegar mix over them and jiggle the jar to get out all the little air bubbles. Cap it tight and toss in the fridge for a week or so before eating. Yep the fridge, I'm too chicken to try leaving these out on the counter or canning them. Tastes the same I swear!
Last week's batch, I actually had 30 eggs from the silkies so I made an extra jar. They are tainted with hot sauce and tsien-tsien chillies (jar on the left).
Now that we have a taste for the pickled eggs, and trust me a jar of 18 only lasts a week, all the girls will decide to set the same day and we won't get any silkie eggs for at least a month while they hatch and raise their broods!