My! What a Big Egg You Laid!

 

Our lovely Ameracauna hen Fertile Myrtle is back to work from her winter laying hiatus.

She has given us many large eggs over the last 3 1/2 years. Many of them were double-yolkers and quite a few more were even triple-yolkers.

A few times she’s even given us two eggs on the same day. She deserves a winter egg-laying vacation, because Fertile Myrtle does everything big when it comes to egg production.

Like this Gigantor egg she laid this weekend.

Jen couldn’t even wrap her hand around this grenade of protein packed goodness.

No words needed.

Gigantor Egg wouldn’t fit in the egg carton with all of it’s diminutive friends, which meant we had only one choice…..

A destiny of sunny-side up, 'drippy' eggs on toast. mmmm!

Factory Farmed eggs look nothing at all like this.

 

And taste nothing at all like these beautiful, bright orange pillows of healthy yumminess.

Thank you to our beautiful, generous, sweet hen, Fertile Myrtle.

One Plus One = Four

 

Our original flock of chickens are almost 3 years old and we still occasionally get double yolk eggs, especially after a hen has taken a short break from laying.

Our Ameracauna hen, Fertile Myrtle is notorious for giving us huge, torpedo shaped eggs, which are sometimes filled with plump, orange double yolks. When she was a pullet and brand new at laying, she also gave us several triple yolk eggs, too.

(And yes, that it is my hand, and not my daughter’s hand. Wow!)

 

You would be correct if you guessed this size egg doesn’t fit into a typical egg carton. This next photo may give you a better idea of their size.

The two eggs on your left were laid by Fertile Myrtle. And the brown egg in the middle is an average size egg laid by one of our Welsumer hens. The little egg on the far right was laid by our Buff Laced Polish Hen.

Have you ever had a double or triple yolk egg? What is your favorite way to eat eggs?

Double Trouble

For those of you who guessed 'double yolk' egg from my previous Big Egg blog post, you are correct! Yay, you!

Wasn't this a huge egg, though??
It made it impossible to close the egg carton.
And it barely even fit in my hand!
But that egg sure did cook up nicely and make a tasty breakfast for me!

And this egg, from one of our lazy Brown Leghorns is cute, but basically useless. It may be time to take CeeCee's advice and warn this girl about the consequences of the 'Crock Pot Camp' if she doesn't get her act together and lay real eggs...not fart eggs!
Oddly enough, when cooked, the center of the egg, even though it's nothing like a real yolk, does puff out and cook differently than the rest of the white.

The Big Egg

Found this XX-Large egg in one of our nest boxes yesterday.
Anyone care to guess how many yolks might be inside it?
Keep in mind. We've had double yolkers here and one triple yolk. I've read that Quad yolks are rare, but not unheard of, too. Or maybe it is just one super large yolk inside?

I'll update by the weekend just how many yolks it has, when I crack it open for a Mega Omlette!

Doubles on Time

We can pretty much count on getting two double yolk eggs every three days, like clockwork. And they are always bigger eggs than the others. The kids think we should gather 12 double yolk eggs and sell them for twice as much. But it would take us about 14-18 days to gather a dozen, and I like to sell our eggs super fresh, only a couple days old, or sold on the same day as laid.
Waiting 18 days to sell a complete dozen double yolks would make several of our double yolk eggs as old as 2 weeks. Yuk. I think one of the reasons folks like to buy locally grown eggs is that they know they will be fresher.
So for now, we just tuck them in a typical dozen carton as a surprise or just munch them ourselves.

More Doubles....Yawn

Two more double yolk eggs discovered today. I think I may end up boring anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis.

This brings the tally up to NINE double Yolk Eggs and one TRIPLE Yolk egg....in only 4 weeks of laying.

It will be interesting to see how long this lasts.

CeeCee, my blogger buddy asked me where in the world we bought our chicks from.

Our chicks were ordered from Privett's Hatchery in Southern, New Mexico...not too far from Roswell...(insert spooky alien music here: ooooo...eeeee...ooooo)

You can take that bit of information however you want it. hehe

These are the two eggs containing the double yolks this morning.
Gorgeous bright orange double yolks
Using double yolks for breakfast is kind of nice in that for 4 Sunny-Side-Ups I only need to crack open two eggs.

2 x 4 =

EIGHT!!!
We were quite suprised to crack open four of our eggs this morning for breakfast, only to discover that all four of them had double yolks! Even our brown leghorn laid a huge white egg filled with two yolks. (I'm glad, too, because I've been annoyed at those leghorn girls lately for eating their own eggs) We all enjoyed a delicious and filling breakfast with the very generous, tasty gifts from our feathered girls.

What are the odds...?

This morning I decided to cook the other egg from The Big and Little. If you remember, the Little only had a yolk, no white, but was very tasty. It was laid by one of our Brown Leghorns.

Today I was preparing to cook The Big. This egg was laid by my very large Ameracauna hen (who has no name). She is also the same girl who laid the underdeveloped egg from the previous post.

I cracked open this x-large egg and was quite surprised.....
What are the odds of getting a second "Double Yolker" egg?
Well, if you were impressed with that, like I was. Then you will be DOUBLY impressed with this:

Yep. That's right. Two eggs, laid by the same hen with double yolks! But that's not ALL. Two weeks ago, the same hen laid her first double yolk egg. So, I'm wondering if this is a reliable pattern? She lays one super large egg every 2-3 days. Each has a double yolk. Do we have a special 'Double Yolker Hen' here on Laughing Orca Ranch??!

I know one thing for sure, as a mother of twins who had my own 'double yolks', I have a great deal of respect for her. She deserves a name. I'm thinking "Myrtle" as in 'Fertile Myrtle'. hehe

Twin Yolks!

We are getting between 2-4 eggs per day now. It's interesting to compare the eggs as it's easy to see which ones are from new layers and from the hens that have been laying for the past 2 weeks. The new layer's eggs are usually paler, smaller and often with thinner shells.

And the other day, we enjoyed a yummy egg breakfast using our first double yolked eggs!

I did some research because my neighbor asked me some curious questions that I couldn't answer.

This is what I found on American Egg Board:

"Yolk
The yolk or yellow portion makes up about 33% of the liquid weight of the egg. It contains all of the fat in the egg and a little less than half of the protein.

With the exception of riboflavin and niacin, the yolk contains a higher proportion of the egg's vitamins than the white. All of the egg's vitamins A, D and E are in the yolk. Egg yolks are one of the few foods naturally containing vitamin D.

The yolk also contains more phosphorus, manganese, iron, iodine, copper, and calcium than the white, and it contains all of the zinc. The yolk of a Large egg contains about 59 calories.

***Double-yolked eggs are often produced by young hens whose egg production cycles are not yet completely synchronized. They're often produced, too, by hens who are old enough to produce Extra Large eggs. Genetics is a factor, also. Occasionally a hen will produce double-yolked eggs throughout her egg-laying career. It is rare, but not unusual, for a young hen to produce an egg with no yolk at all.***

In fertilized eggs, the yolk is the site of embryo formation.It is the yolk which is responsible for the egg's emulsifying properties."