# How do we get edible chicken eggs

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-edible-chicken-eggs/358154>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 25, 2006, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-edible-chicken-eggs/358154 "2006-05-25T12:15:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![A.R.Cane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@A.R.Cane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.R.Cane)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-edible-chicken-eggs/358154/41 "2006-05-27T11:16:23Z")

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> [@David Simmons](#):
>
> As will any hen lacking sufficient calcium. A co-worker of mine, a city boy, and his wife, a city girl, decided to raise chickens for the eggs. After awhile he asked me what was wrong with his hens as all the egg shells were soft. I told him to get some oyster shell feed at the feed store and in the future buy chicken feed with calcium added.
> 
> One of his horses stepped on a chicken and broke its leg. He asked me how to put the poor thing out of its misery. “Cut its head off.” Well, he didn’t want to so I took my butcher knife and did it for him. Such agonizing you never saw as that which he went through. I think they finally gave up on chicken raising as too brutal.

I have memories of my grandmother snagging chickens and tying them to the clothes line, upside down, by their feet. She would then chop off their heads w/ a large knife, let them bleed out and dunk them in boiling water before plucking them. I can still smell the foul odor of hot, wet, chicken feathers. Yuck!

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**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-we-get-edible-chicken-eggs/358154/42 "2006-05-27T17:31:22Z")

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> [@picunurse](#):
>
> Human females produce an infertile egg every month they have a period. Human eggs, once fertilized, are nourished inside the body. Birds eggs carry a yolk to nourish the embryo while it develops. If no sperm penatrate the egg, either in the woman or the chicken, the egg is expelled unfertlized.
> 
> Only cats, as far as I know, ovulate only when stimulated to do so by the presence of sperm.

Female cats and rabbits ovulate in response to mating, not the presence of sperm. This information is handy to know if your Siamese queen goes into heat when she’s too young to breed.

I don’t know if there are other animals that produce eggs only when they mate, I onlly know about cats and rabbits.

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