Eggs
Weight, colour, shell, storage, oddities: understanding the hen's egg with answers from a breeder-selector.
27 perguntas
The blue-egg breeds are Araucana, Legbar Huppée; for olive-green eggs, Olivette; for chocolate-brown eggs, Marans. The colour is genetic and specific to the breed: it changes neither with age nor with feeding, and has no effect on taste. If egg colour is your main criterion, the listing filters directly on it.
Of course. An egg is an egg: a yolk, a white, a shell. The variety of size and colour from one breed to the next is in fact one of the pleasures of keeping them — you will find no basket like it in the shops. Only size makes any real difference in the kitchen: you need two bantam eggs where a recipe calls for one.
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Yes, with no difference whatever. Whether an egg is fertilised or not changes nothing in its composition or its taste. The only precaution concerns freshness: a fertilised egg left several days in the warmth begins to develop the embryo, and small traces of blood may then be found. Collect every day and the question does not arise.
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No, and neither does his presence trigger the hens into lay — a common confusion. The cockerel serves only to fertilise the eggs, and so to produce chicks. He brings something else to the flock: he keeps watch, gives warning of danger and settles quarrels between hens. But as far as egg production goes, he changes nothing.
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Because a young hen's reproductive tract has not yet reached its final size. The very first eggs are small, sometimes even without a yolk, and then the size rises week by week until it settles. The same thing happens across a season: eggs at point of lay are smaller than those in the height of the season. One more reason not to judge a layer on her first few weeks.
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Shell colour is genetic and specific to the breed: white, cream, brown, chocolate, blue or green. It is a pigment laid down as the shell forms, with no effect whatever on taste, nutritional value or freshness. One and the same hen keeps her colour all her life, with an intensity that may fade slightly late in the season. Here: blue eggs Araucana, Legbar Huppée; chocolate eggs Marans. Our listing filters directly by egg colour.
It is nearly always the sign of a young hen just starting: the first eggs are small, sometimes even without a yolk, before the size settles. In an adult, an isolated small egg turns up occasionally and is of no concern. What should raise a flag is repetition alongside other signs — soft shell, irregular laying — which points rather towards feeding or health.
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The yolk is released by the ovary, then travels down the oviduct where it is surrounded in turn by the white, the membranes and finally the calcium shell. It is that last stage, the longest, which takes up most of the time. The shell colour is laid down right at the end — which explains why a brown egg is white inside. The whole process takes about 24 to 26 hours.
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About 24 to 26 hours, some twenty of them for the shell alone. That is why a hen cannot lay two eggs on the same day, and why she lays a little later each day until she skips one to reset. A hen laying «every day» is in fact laying in clutches, broken by pauses.
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Because laying is independent of fertilisation. A hen lays whether there is a cockerel or not — the cockerel merely fertilises the eggs, which is what allows chicks to be produced. Without him the eggs are simply unfertilised, and perfectly fit to eat. That is in fact the case for almost all eggs sold in the shops.
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The spread is far wider than people imagine: from one to two and a half times between our smallest and our largest breeds. The weight shown on each breed page comes from the breed standard and not from any weighing on our holding — it is a reference, not a measurement. We are working towards publishing weights actually taken here, by age of the breeding hens, as we already do for laying.
Egg size follows frame fairly faithfully: the giant breeds lay the heaviest eggs and the true bantams the lightest — that is, in our catalogue, Brahma, Cochin, Orpington on the one hand and, for the smallest frames, Combattant anglais moderne nain, Naine hollandaise, Sebright on the other, with a ratio of one to more than two between the extremes. Each breed page gives the standard egg weight alongside the adult weight, so the two can be compared at a glance. Note however: a large egg does not mean many eggs, and often the reverse.
In large part yes: a light hen cannot produce a very heavy egg, which is a physical limit. But the correlation is not exact — at equal frame some breeds lay appreciably larger than others, and that is precisely what breeding works on. Both weights appear side by side on each breed page.
Not necessarily. The tendency exists but admits exceptions: some large breeds lay medium-sized eggs, while breeds of intermediate frame produce eggs that are surprisingly large for their size. It is a criterion to check page by page rather than infer from the silhouette — like flight height, size is a poor shortcut.
Egg size rises over the first weeks of laying, then settles once the hen is adult — generally within the two or three months following the first egg. It then continues to increase very gradually from season to season. That is why judging a breed's egg size from a pullet's first eggs makes no sense at all.
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Yes, and very clearly so: eggs at the start of the season are smaller than those at its height. The hen resumes laying after the winter pause, and size climbs back gradually with the rhythm. Strong summer heat can, conversely, reduce size and thin the shell. One more reason to read a complete season rather than a single reading.
Because a standard describes a breed, not an individual. Within one breed each hen has her own build, her own age, her own rhythm: differences in egg size between two sisters are normal. Add to that the season, the feeding and the stage of lay. It is in fact on that variability that breeding works — narrowing consistency takes generations.
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Almost always a matter of calcium: either the intake is insufficient, or the hen is not absorbing it properly, through a lack of vitamin D or a dietary imbalance. Strong heat produces the same effect by reducing intake. The other possibilities are advanced age and, more rarely, illness. A suitable layer feed and calcium available at will resolve the great majority of cases.
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The calcium has not been laid down evenly: that gives roughness, chalky deposits or thicker patches. In a young hen just starting it is unremarkable. In an adult, excess calcium, stress during shell formation or disrupted laying account for most cases. The egg remains perfectly fit to eat, but it does not go into the incubator: that is a breeder's rule, just as misshapen or double-yolked eggs are set aside.
The egg was expelled before the shell had formed: only the membranes remain, soft to the touch. It typically happens in a pullet whose tract is coming into action, after severe stress, or where calcium is lacking. On its own it is of no concern. Repeated, it calls for a review of the feeding and a check on the hen's condition.
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Two ovulations occurred almost simultaneously and both yolks were enclosed together. It is common in pullets whose cycle has not yet settled, and in certain heavy-laying lines. The egg is larger than usual and perfectly fit to eat. In the incubator, by contrast, it is set aside: very rare exceptions produce two chicks, but the average return stays well below that of an ordinary egg.
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Shape depends chiefly on the hen herself: each bird lays eggs of fairly constant shape, so much so that you can often tell the layer from her egg. The breed sets a tendency, while age and laying rhythm account for the rest. For incubation it is better to keep to regular shapes: eggs that are too round or too pointed set the air cell badly.
Purely because of feeding. The pigments in grass, maize or coloured greens give a deeper yolk; a ration lacking them gives a paler one. Breed has nothing to do with it, and a dark yolk means neither more flavour nor more nutritional value: it reflects a grassy run or suitable feeding, which is good news in itself.
For eating, allow about four weeks after laying, kept unwashed and cool: the natural cuticle protects the egg as long as it is not removed. That is why you should never wash an egg you intend to keep. For incubation the rules are quite different and duration becomes the deciding factor — hatchability falls markedly with storage time. Our notebook sets out the temperatures and humidity levels to observe according to the duration.
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The glass-of-water test remains the simplest: a fresh egg sinks and lies flat on the bottom, an older one stands up, and one to throw away floats — the air cell grows over time. At the slightest doubt, break the egg into a separate bowl before adding it to the rest: the smell never lies, and it saves losing a whole dish.
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Almost always because of a first egg broken by accident: the hen tastes it, finds it good, and does it again — then the others copy her. The causes of that first accident are well known: too few nest boxes, bedding too thin, thin shells through lack of calcium, or eggs collected too infrequently. Put the cause right quickly: once the habit takes hold it is very difficult to break.
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Breed standards state an egg weight, but that is a standard figure and not a measurement from our holding. In practice, with rare exceptions, this criterion does not really enter into the breeding of most of the breeds we work with: conformity to the standard, health, fertility and laying come first. Weight comes in rather as a warning sign at incubation, where eggs far from the average are set aside.
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