The internet is rife with photographs of eggs from chickens and other poultry that have black shells. Are they a trick of the imagination? Poor photographic lighting? Or true poultry eggs with inky shells? If so, which poultry breed lays a black egg? Maybe Ducks Among ducks, the Cayuga sometimes lays eggs with black shells. […]
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Homegrown eggs are so tasty they are unlikely to sit around long enough to spoil. However, eggs do occasionally go off. Every chicken keeper should know how to tell a good egg from a bad egg. Why an Egg Goes Bad A bad egg is generally one that has been contaminated, rendering it inedible or […]
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An egg’s internal qualities cannot be determined by looking at the outside of the egg. Detecting such things as blood spots, double yolks, hairline cracks, and thin shells requires candling the eggs. Candling means examining the contents of an egg by placing it against a bright light. It’s called candling because the bright light was […]
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The earliest documented instance of a “rooster” laying an egg occurred in Basel, Switzerland, in 1474. The “rooster” was sentenced to death for the “unnatural crime of laying an egg.” A similar event took place, again in Switzerland, in 1730. In the United States, in 1922 a brown Leghorn “rooster” in Madison, Wisconsin, began laying […]
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When we refer to eggs, we’re usually thinking of chicken eggs. But other types of poultry lay eggs that are just as tasty. Every egg contains a yolk surrounded by albumen, encased in membranes, and protected by a thick shell. Differences occur in how these parts are put together. Let’s see how the eggs […]
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Most eggs sold at the supermarket have white shells. So where do brown eggs and blue eggs come from? The color of the shell is determined by the breed of the hen that laid the egg. Most white eggs sold at the supermarket are laid by Leghorn hens. Many other breeds lay eggs with white […]
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As more and more have started raising small backyard flocks of fowl, a lively dispute has erupted over the merits of washing eggs. On one side of the isle, we have staunch no-washers who argue that cleaning eggs with water can actually invite harmful bacteria through the shell membrane. On the other side, we have […]
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