They were probably free range, which has become pretty much standard in the UK now. Can’t remember the last time I bought eggs from caged hens. We’ve had a mass of adverse publicity about battery farming over the years so free range has become pretty much the norm thanks to customer demand. Some supermarkets no longer sell battery farmed eggs at all (such as Sainsbury’s). Which, presumably, means nicer eggs.
Hereabouts I’d say it’s 50/50 between them being left out on normal shelves and being refrigerated in stores.
Strange thing is, I buy the eggs not refrigerated and when I get home I put them in the fridge. Just out of habit (and the mental connection of dairy = requires refrigration).
Me too, force of habit.
Me too. Mostly, I think, because the box of 12 fits neatly on the shelf at the bottom of the fridge.
Refrigerators are often equipped with inbuilt (or accessory) egg racks in the door shelves - so I suppose it’s expected that we’ll keep them there. I never do because of the disadvantages of cooking chilled eggs (cakes come out heavier and boiled eggs are more likely to crack in the pan)
But eggs aren’t dairy products?
Anyway, there are two supermarkets in my town and one refrigerates their eggs and the other doesn’t. Kind of shoots down theories about the cooler UK climate being to blame.
Don’t remember any waxy layer on the shell when I was a teen and collected eggs from our chickens on a daily basis.
Mostly I washed the eggs because there was shit on them. Not ‘stuff’ shit, but actual chicken shit.
I really hope that’s a joke…
That’s probably true but brown is fairly common now I think because consumers associate brown with “organic” or “free range” even though egg color has nothing to do with that.
One of my fondest memories is staying at my aunties farm in upper Weardale and collecting little bantam eggs from pretty much every farmyard niche the little buggers could find and then having them freshly boiled for my breakfast…aaaahhh! happy times. They never lasted long enough to need refrigerating I can tell you.
Dairy product = contains milk from a mammal.
In which way is an egg a dairy product? 
They’re a dairy product because you find them in the dairy department in the grocery store next to the milk and yogurt. Duh.
Not in my grocery store! They are in a whole different aisle! 
I don’t know if it’s an American thing, but for some weird reason, we do seem to lop in eggs with dairy a lot of the time. I’m not sure why, as at about half the groceries I go to, eggs and real dairy are not near each other. Eggs are most assuredly not dairy, except in some loose colloquial uses of the word.
“Dairy products” come from milk-bearing animals.
Eggs can be found in the “dairy section” of supermarkets.
Not so fast, there. Dairy hens.
That’s because the eggs (in America) are kept in the refrigerated section of the supermarket.Which is also where the dairy products are.
Ergo, eggs are dairy.
See? It’s simple logic. 
Other “facts” that city-slickers know:
Eggs are dairy products.
Fruit juice is a made in a factory.
Cereal is also made in a factory–the word has nothing to do with a category of crops grown by farmers.
And there’s an animal called a veal. You’ve seen it on restaurant menus, right?
OK, I need context here. What the hell is that? I mean, I see that it’s tongue-in-cheek (right?), what’s it doing in what appears to be a real newspaper (and not a News of The World type tabloid?)
Beats me. I just googled “dairy hens” or something to see what would come up.