So I understand eggs with double yolks aren’t rare but, how unusual is it to have multiple eggs with double yolks in a single carton of a dozen eggs? I ask because I just finished using a carton of eggs and 5 of the 12 had double yolks. Is this unusual?
For the sake of full disclosure these were graded jumbo and while not organic they touted the fact they are “pasture raised on small family farms.” Maybe double yolks are more likely in jumbo eggs since they are larger?
I don’t think it is terribly unusual. I have received full cartons of double yolks before. One farm market vendor was pretty consistent about it so I asked him and he said he had a bunch of related hens (sisters, mostly) that almost always laid double-yolked eggs. It’s a great way to impress 7-year-olds for show and tell.
Yes. It happens. I’ve had multiple double yolks in a carton of jumbo eggs. Probably about 5, like you, but I know I’ve read somewhere on these boards reports (as above) of entire cartons being double. I did find this:
I generally do or at least did expect at least one double yolk in a jumbo carton of eggs, though for the past decade or so I’ve only bought regular large eggs at the store.
I saw an item on 50 Times People Absolutely Won The Food Lottery (New Pics) | Bored Panda (item 7) today that showed a HUGE double-yolked egg. With another normal egg also inside.
That poor hen.
I buy Jumbo eggs for our dogs’ morning treats. I’ve had half of the dozen double yolked, but I’ve also had zero.
Once or twice I’ve had whole cartons of double yolked eggs. Just regular eggs from the grocery store. They would have made great devilled eggs, finally enough yolks to fill up the whites.
My uncles farm produced eggs for the hatchery. During the peak laying season we gathered and graded 4000 to 4500 hatching eggs a day. We graded them based on weight and condition (no cracked eggs).
We counted and logged the daily production. It was easy, we just counted the cases we filled. We used 12x12 flats (30 eggs to a flat).
We didn’t count the culls. I think we got at least 3 flats a day of extra large (almost a 100). This was in the 1970’s and we didn’t log the counts. My uncle sold the extra large eggs to a few people. Some had single, double, or triple yolks. You never knew until it was cracked open.
We even occasionally cracked open a egg and found another tiny egg inside. We found blood inside eggs. We learned to never crack a egg directly into a mixing bowl or skillet. It was better to use a saucer and check it.
Approx 4000 graded hatching eggs a day with 100 extra large culls. We also had other culls, marble sized eggs, soft shelled, and cracked that didn’t get counted.
My family ate some of the cracked eggs. That scares me now. Thankfully no one got sick.
Boxed eggs. Brings back bad memories. I helped load the truck. Those filled boxes weighed at least 30 lbs. That’s a lot for a 14 year old kid.
Hatching eggs are labor intensive. They had to be gathered and graded by hand. The hens were in pens with the roosters
We use our hen’s eggs raw in smoothies all the time. Never a problem (so far). Figure three raw eggs a week for me, five a week for my gf, over the last 18 years.
We ate eggs with hairline cracks.
We threw it away if the shell was pushed in or the crack was moist (leaking egg).
I used to watch the hens lay an egg. I found it interesting at age 12. Chickens often pucker up and poop afterwards.
The hatchery didn’t want them washed. We just scraped any poop off with a dull knife.
The farms probably wash eggs that go to the grocery stores.
Do you remember how many cocks were kept? Sounds like you had 5,000 or so hens. Maybe 500 roosters?
We started the year with about 9000 young hens and I think 2000 roosters. They usually started laying about three weeks after we got them. They started brooding after 9 months and the hatchery picked them up.
Our hens typically laid every other day. It may have been the breed of chicken.
We removed the dirty sawdust shavings and hosed down the barns before getting new chickens. Friends have told me they have to throughly disinfect now. The rules are much stricter today.
@kayaker can you still buy sawdust shavings for your chicken pens?
Shavings were cheap in the 1970’s. They may be expensive now.
I remember one season my uncle couldn’t buy shavings. He had to use rice hulls. That was a mess. They got packed and hard. We had a lot of eggs broke. My uncle never used rice hulls again.
We buy bales of compressed wood-chips/shavings for our horse stalls and chicken coop. But we just have 5-7 hens at a time, my gf rakes the coop daily, and during daylight they are outside in a fenced paddock area.
I’m glad you can still buy shavings.
My grandfather had a small pen like yours. Maybe a dozen chickens and a rooster.
Rice hulls often have extremely sharp edges, tiny ones. They are very caustic. I’m not surprised a lot of eggs broke.
Powdered rice hulls are great for soaking up motor oil and other spilled chemicals, but don’t breathe it in or get an eyeful of the stuff. It’s nasty.
In the US eggs must be washed for sale at grocery stores. This also means they must be stored refrigerated because washing them removes the protective coating on the egg. In some European countries the eggs must not be washed for sale, for various reasons including that the coating is removed. These eggs will not be refrigerated. It seems that either way is fine provided you follow the full hygiene guidance for each method.
Yes to all of this.
The sorting of eggs into Large, Extra Large, and Jumbo is done based on weight (mass), and of course the yolk is the heaviest portion of the egg, so it stands to reason that nearly ALL double yolk eggs will end up as Jumbo.
Meanwhile, without going into the sad details, as I undertsand it, the frequency of hens laying a double yolk egg goes up with factory (non-“organic”) methods of egg farming. I can’t say what this particular “pasture-raised, small family farm” eggery is doing, of course, or what is different between “organic” egg farming versus whatever else goes on there.
So combine the two and yes, you’ll find a fairly high frequency of double-yolked eggs buying jumbo, non-free-range cartons.
And just from Googling around, it looks like the overall expectancy is 1-in-1000 for chicken eggs, but that doesn’t take into account size and sorting, which would drive that number way down for specifically jumbo eggs. I also read that you can get a maximum of nine (!?) yolks in one egg. I don’t recall ever seeing more than two. Anybody here find triples or beyond?
(This kind of reminds me of horse chestnuts – when we were kids, we would try to find the biggest horse chestnut pods and see how many we can find inside. I’m not sure what our record was, but I know we’ve found at least four.)
I was going to say… I use a fair number of eggs, and can’t remember the last time I got a double-yolked one. But I never buy jumbo. I usually get large (since that what US recipes call for) and sometimes get medium because one store sometimes has excellent prices for medium-size free-range eggs. But the medium are a nuisance – noticeably less egg in an omelet or recipe, so I don’t get them unless it’s a big price differential per pound of egg.
That’s interesting too, because I pretty much never even see “medium” sized eggs for sale at all. The smallest I see are “Large”, the typical ones “Extra Large”, and I would say even more cartons of “Jumbo” eggs than “Large”.