With the approach of Thanksgiving I went shopping and stocked up on eggs for various recipes.
It didn’t occur to me till I got home that all the eggs I ever see in the store are from chickens. How come we can’t get Turkey eggs for thanksgiving?
Or can we and I just haven’t noticed?
If someone tells me that Turkeys are mammals or that they birth live young I’ll have to poke you in the eye.
Turkey eggs exist and are available. I’ve painted Turkey eggs for decorations. They’re significantly larger than chicken eggs.
The short answer is probably that there doesn’t exist a large operation producing Turkey Eggs for market. You can get them, but you have to look for them in special places and pay extra.
The bigger question is "Why don’t they sell more Turkey Eggs ? Why isn’t there a market for these? I don’t know why. I note that they don’t sell goose eggs in my Stop and Shop, or duck eggs, and I could ask the same question about those. But whether the answer is pragmatic (i.e. – there’s some practical reason for it, like Turkeys don’t lay enough eggs to be worthwhile, and you can’t force them to) or cultural (for example, people don’t generally eat turkey eggs, and never have in large quantities, and nobody wants to take a big loss promoting them) I have mno idea. Be an interesting research topic.
They don’t lay eggs in the fall as far as I know. Unless the domestic ones are messed up in that way too. This would also mean you have a much more limited amount to use for increasing the flock on the farm. Unless they have a somebody that offers them a good price for eggs ahead of time, I don’t think a producer would waste time trying to sell them in the market when they are being produced.
So here is the link to Cecil’s answer which I found.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1262/why-cant-you-buy-turkey-eggs-in-stores
Interesting…
Bird eggs to reptilian eggs… at which animal is the uh… “break-point”"
(For want of a better terminology?)
Pullet provides a pretty good answer in this thread.
I think the gist of it is that meat producing birds are different from egg producing birds. Turkeys are generally raised for meat. Egg prodicing birds are older, and don’t produce good meat. You should probably read what **Pullet/b] wrote, because I’m just paraphrasing from memory.
Pullet?
Dude, that’s just too surreal for me. 
But I did check out the linked thread. Sounds like the turkey is the “catfish” of the avarian world.
It’s the other way round: reptilian eggs to bird eggs. Birds descended from reptiles, by way of the dinosaurs. So there isn’t a single break point: there’s a bunch of dinosaurs in the middle.
Don’t forget caviar…ah ummm excuse me <retch>
What bird is closest to dinosaurs? Like we mammals have monotremes which lay eggs like lizards (although the montreme eggs and lizards might differ it’s the closest mammals come). What order of birds have eggs closest to dinosaurs?
I assume chickens weren’t originally like the ones we have today. They had to be bred over generations to lay that number of eggs.
Does a turkey egg taste similar to a chicken egg? If so then it would make no sense to breed them for greater egg production 'cause you could just use more chicken eggs.
To hijack the thread, what other kind of eggs do people around the world eat?
I’ve heard of people eating fish eggs and turtle eggs
Duck eggs and quail eggs are common enough. My local supermarket sells quail eggs, but duck eggs I’ve only seen at farmer’s markets. I’ve never gotten around to buying duck eggs, but apparently they’re richer and more flavorful than chicken eggs.
edit: Oh, ostrich eggs are definitely eaten, too.
I’m not a zoologist or a paleontologist, but I suspect that we don’t know enough about dinosaur eggs to say that.
However, yes, it’s clear that with mammal eggs, the monotremes come closest to the common ancestral form. But that’s because the eggs of marsupials and of placental mammals are so different.
Speaking of mammalian eggs, has anybody had a platypus egg?
I can’t believe a male turkey can weigh 80 pounds. That’s incredible.
Turkeys don’t produce nearly enough eggs to make it worth it. Geese and ducks are somewhat better, but do not come close to chickens.
And if you are ever in Grand Rapids, MI, stop in at Marie Catrib’s for the chocolate pudding (just one of many wonderful options) made with duck eggs. It’s so good, we had it instead of wedding cake.
Apparently penguin eggs taste really really fishy.
That’s why “Penguin Eggs” is my wife’s nickname.
Apparently, so do murre eggs. San Francisco depended on eggers to harvest sea-bird eggs from the Farallon Islands for years before large-scale chicken farms were established. I read about it in Susan Casey’s book the Devil’s Teeth, which is primarily about white shark research.
Egg production chickens lay around 300 eggs per year while turkeys lay around 80 eggs per year.
Want to pay $12.00 for a dozen eggs ?
Birds are dinosaurs, according to modern classifications, so the question is somewhat meaningless.
All modern birds belong to a single lineage that branched off from other dinosaurs in the Jurassic. Therefore no one particular group of birds is more closely related to dinosaurs than any other group. It’s a bit like asking who is more closely related to your grandparents, you or your first cousin.
Among living groups, however, the ratites (ostrich, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwis) retain some “primitive” characterisics that indicate they branched off from other birds before any other group. But there is no indication that they have eggs that are more like those of dinosaurs than any other group.