Thursday, July 30, 2009

Egg Learnings


This is what my counter looks like with 2 days of eggs being washed.
Usually 1/2 the eggs don't need to be washed which is good because those last a lot longer than those that get washed.  The one that get washed are cleaned with bubbles in a egg cleaning bucket and washing solution.


I love the various colors of eggs but am a satisfied... nope, I need more darker eggs so I'm now on to chickens to give me variety of colors.


After they are washed and sorted by size, each egg is candled with this little box.  You turn off the lights, put the egg on the box, press that red button and look inside the egg.


I love to see the double yolkers.

I've been gathering eggs about 4-5 hours after they are laid and I've been noticing more and more of that white stringy thing (technical name is on other websites) on the end of the yolk.  I assumed that meant the egg was fertilized.  That's why you candle, to look for baby chickens in the eggs as you don't want to sell those to someone.  

Evidently, all eggs fertilized or not have that white string.  The more white string, the fresher the eggs.  So I've been finding more of the white string because these eggs are really, really fresh.  And I put them right in the fridge so I am locking in all that protein.  I had no idea.  


So much for learning on the job....  now I know that the white stringy thing actually means fresh eggs.  Well, ours are really fresh these days!!


4 comments:

Blue Heron Farm said...

Why would it be a big deal to sell a fertilized egg? The chickens don't start to develop until the hen sets on them, right? It's not like you can accidentally sell a fetal chicken if you are collecting eggs daily.

Or am I missing something?

Michael@greenakeys.com said...

Totally correct. You cant tell the difference until they have been INCUBATED for 5 days or so. And you will only see blood vessels at that point.

thestorypoet said...

Sorry, I meant that you wouldn't want to sell a fertilized egg that has a chick starting in it. Meaning to state the obvious. Which yes, takes the 5 days of a bird sitting on the egg to get to that point.

The hens can grap an egg under their wings and they can move them, so I supposed a sneaky hen could move an egg around the eggmobile and hide it from me for a few days. But very unlikely.

I was uneducated about the white stuff hanging off the yolk. I thought THAT was the chick-- nope- thank goodness because I was seeing lots of it - so really fresh eggs.

this is annette and not thestorypoet-
though if you want a poem or story written as an original for your child-- thestorypoet does a great job.

Erin said...

I got a double yolk yesterday - so exciting :)