Interesting. I never or almost never had a double-yolked egg from a standard grocery store carton back when I used to buy those; but fairly often get them from small-farm eggs, whether organically raised or not.
I’ve assumed this is because small farms are more likely to keep older chickens, who produce larger eggs; and the larger eggs are more likely to have double yolks, though I did get a double yolk in a not very large small-farm egg just the other day. I might be wrong; I don’t myself raise chickens.
I usually buy large or extra large; though sometimes the eggs I get aren’t size-sorted, or large ones aren’t available from a source that I’m willing to buy from that’s also easy to get to that day.
I would think it’s the last part that matters most: if the eggs aren’t size-sorted, you’ll get some double-yolk eggs where you never did buying “supermarket” eggs in Large or Extra-Large.
Older hens laying larger eggs is news to me; I’d think an egg farm would keep such hens around, as long as they continued to lay eggs regularly (though a hen that lays a Large or Extra Large egg every day in a week would be more valuable than an older hen that lays a Jumbo egg three or four times in that same week).
But what I was recalling earlier - and just Google searched for to confirm - was that double yolk eggs are more likely to come from hens laying early…However, that article also admits hens nearing the end of their laying careers (“henopause?”) may also have irregularity causing double yolks, as well as certain breeds bred to lay larger eggs more frequently.
This is what I wanted to observe. In Europe we take a different approach and it also works: you only have to be consistent. That is also the reason we Europeans opposed chlorinated chickens during the recent trade talks so vehemently. Here prevention of contamination is the way to follow, in the USA you go the way of sterilisation afterwards.
Sterilising with chlorinated water also has the advantage for the seller that it soaks the chicken, thus it weighs ~5% more. This considered selling water for the price of chicken over here. Eggs in Europe are not refrigerated because cooling them reduces their volume, so they “suck” the contamination on the outside in. When the coating is intact the pathogens stay outside and you only consume the inside. The process of cracking the eggs is the only time the inside and the outside come into contact: then the eggs must be consumed fast. If you make mayo and let it stand unrefrigerated, you get problems. I eat tiramisú I make with fresh eggs every morning for breakfast, but I freeze the whole lot immediately and only thaw the portion I eat every day. Never had a problem so far.
I was thinking myself, before I wrote the post, along those lines: “WTF? Tiramisu? For breakfast? Every day? Well, let’s see … espresso … eggs … carbs … ok, checks out.” I guess the only thing is that tiramisu is one of those things I like to settle for bit.
I know at one time eggs were “candled” as part of the grading process to inspect the interior. Fertilized eggs (with blood spots) and double-yolked eggs were segregated and sold separately. Growing up, my mother always bought double-yolk eggs packaged separately in the local grocery store because they were cheaper. Today, I assume, they are used to make powdered eggs, etc.
Interesting. The double-yolked eggs I used to buy at the farm market were jumbo in size but definitely came from pastured chickens, not factory. But what I found interesting is that the farmer said the chickens who had double yolked eggs were mostly sisters with the same parentage.
Farms (or packagers, anyway) DEFINITELY wash grocery-store eggs, at least in the United States. There are many parts of the world where eggs are stored and sold at room temperature, because the protective cuticle hasn’t been removed.
The brand of eggs I bought were Vital Farms. They say they have 108 square feet per hen on rotated pastures. No idea if that is a good amount or not. Their slogan is “Where Honest Food Is Raised” and strongly promoting the idea they sell ethically produced food. I haven’t delved deeply into their reputation but I don’t know of any reason to think they engage in factory farming. Apparently the carton has a stamp on the end telling you the name of the farm that produced the eggs. I have thrown the carton into the recycling bin for my building so I can’t see where these eggs came from.
Apparently young hens (pullets) often lay double yolk eggs. That’s probably why I remember my uncles farm got a lot. The hatchery provided young chickens that were supposed to start laying within a couple weeks. The hatchery provided the feed and that can be expensive.
I was just a kid and didn’t realize we got less double yolk eggs as the hens aged.
They were picked up before brooding. The hatchery wouldn’t feed chickens that stopped laying.
I always buy Extra-Large size eggs because my wife prefers them. Occasionally there will be cartons of XL eggs marked as double-yolked and I snap those up. So at least one producer here is getting large enough numbers to make it worthwhile separating these for sale in specially marked cartons.
I buy Jumbo whenever I can because I want the double yolks. The double-yolk eggs are often much than the other jumbo eggs in the carton, sometimes nearly the size of a duck egg.
A while back, I asked elsewhere if a double-yolked egg could produce two chicks, and they said that it could in theory, but it’s unlikely that either chick will live long enough to hatch because there isn’t enough room, or enough nourishment, for them.
