Life is Filled with Surprises
Baby chicks are born knowing how to eat, drink, walk, and admire themselves. These are 1 day old. A couple of weeks ago I shared an assortment of facts about chickens. Today I’m going to share a few things only a chicken person would know.
A hen’s egg-laying apparatus–it’s officially called the oviduct–is like an assembly line. Before I had hens, I knew nothing about this sort of thing, so I’m happy to share what I’ve learned. It’s FASCINATING.
Like a woman, a hen is born with all the eggs she will ever lay–or at least the yolks, that is. (Not full-sized yolks, you understand. Tiny little yolks.) Every 22 hours or so, depending on the chicken breed, a mature yolk leaves the ovary and travels down the oviduct on its way to the “vent.” (Everything that comes out of a hen’s rear comes through the vent. But different tubes lead to the vent, so there’s no co-mingling.)
At the first assembly station, the white is wrapped around the yolk. At the next station, the shell encases the yolk and white. At the next station, the shell is “spray painted” with whatever colors are common to that hen’s breed. (My girls lay white, tan, blue, and chocolate brown eggs). At the very last station, a thin, clear membrane is applied to the shell, so that when it is laid in the sand or straw, the tiny pores will be sealed against dirt and bacteria.
You do not have to refrigerate freshly-laid eggs UNLESS YOU WASH THEM. If you wash them, you’re washing away the protective coating, so they need to go into the fridge. They will keep about a month sitting out on the counter. In Europe, they sell unfrigerated eggs. In the U.S., the egg you buy in the grocery store may be spotless, but it may also be three months old. As an egg ages, air seeps into the egg through the pores. You can determine which egg is old and which is fresh by putting them into a pan of water. Old eggs float because they’re full of air. Fresh eggs sink.
If the hen has been with a rooster, the yolk will have been fertilized, but the chick will not begin to develop until the day near-constant heat is applied–99.5 degrees. So a hen could lay six or seven or ten eggs over a couple of weeks, and they will hatch together, approximately 21 days after she begins to sit on them. (I tell you, God outdid Himself with the chicken.)
Now . . . occasionally mishaps occur. I once cracked a freshly-laid egg into my frying pan and gasped when the yolk was brown and stunk to high heaven. Apparently that yolk had stalled along the oviduct and rotted inside the hen’s body before it went through the shelling and shrink-wrapping stages. Fortunately, that rarely happens.
Sometimes a hen will lay a “fairy egg.” These are about the size of a Jordan almond. There is no yolk inside. Apparently a yolk forgot to leave the ovary, so the white didn’t have much to surround, and the shell didn’t have much white . . . you get the picture.
A large egg, a standard egg, and a bantam egg. Sometimes two yolks will leave the ovary at the same time, and you’ll get a slightly-larger, double-yolked egg. Some hens have a tendency to lay double-yolked eggs, and that’s fine. I know what you’re thinking–could a fertilized double-yolked egg successfuly hatch? Not likely, though it does occasionally happen. But since the chicks breathe the air in the shell until they hatch, it’s not likely that two chicks would have enough air to survive until hatch time.
The other day I found a fairy egg in the nest box. (They always make me smile.) And a few days later I found a ginormous egg in the chicken run–if it had been round, it’d have been a softball. All I can figure is that the hen’s missing yolks got together in the pipeline and created a monster. I haven’t cracked that egg yet, but I’m guessing there are two or three yolks inside.
Those little brown spots you occasionally see in the egg? Harmless. The little globs of white stuff that you sometimes see on the yolk? Those are the chalazae, two little muscles that attach the yolk to the shell and hold it in place. (You wouldn’t want your egg scrambled before you cracked it, right?)
Why are my egg yolks a beautiful orange yellow while grocery store eggs are paler? Because my chickens are allowed to step out on occasion (when the dogs are in the house) to eat grass. The color comes from Xanthophylls. The more plants and grass a chicken eats, the more yellow their egg yolks will be.
Can you eat fertilized eggs? Of course. The eggs will not develop AT ALL until the hen begins her official “sitting” or “brooding.” Before she applies that constant heat, the egg is on hold, and you, the eater, wouldn’t be able to tell a fertile egg from an unfertilized one.
Smaller chickens (bantams) lay smaller eggs. Bigger chickens lay bigger eggs. And no, the humongous egg below isn’t from an ostrich or duck–it came from one of my hens, probably the girl who laid the fairy egg.
I think she deserves a week off. 
Ordinary eggs from my girls and the monster egg. (Those aren’t cracks–maybe they’re stretch marks? LOL!) About that ginormous egg–I cracked it and found a normal egg inside! If you’re interested in an entertaining and educational video about how such things occur, check it out here.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little tutorial on eggs. The next time you hold one, marvel at God’s incredible engineering. The perfect food, all in one tidy little package. Here’s to the chicken and the egg!
