This post brings back memories...unfortunately, I live inside the city limits and there are restrictions on how many chickens I can have (which ended up making it more trouble than is was worth), but my grandparents lived in the country when I was growing up and we would always help gather the eggs when we would go visit them. They used a metal pail like you would take to the beach to collect the eggs each day and would frequently fill it 3/4 full or more. Needless to say, we ate a lot of eggs and my grandmother used a lot in her baking (mostly bread, cobbler and teacakes [cookies]).