\n<\/em>Nope. Only if a rooster has been in the \u201ccompany\u201d of a hen. Usually, one rooster can \u201cservice\u201d approximately ten or so hens. Roosters are necessary only if you wish to hatch chicks (of course, they’re also beautiful to have around).<\/p>\n
You mean a hen will lay an egg that’s unfertilized? Why are the yolks from your chickens so orange-ish? What are the white squiggly things attached to the yolks? Are brown eggs better for you? According to Storey’s Guide To Raising Chickens<\/em>, \u201csperm of a fertilized egg contributes an insignificant amount of nutrients to a fertilized egg\u201d and \u201cshell color has nothing to do with an egg’s nutritional content.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the local elementary school, fourth grade students hatch chicks as part of the science curriculum\u2014learning about the daily development of a chicken egg along with way. Egg customers of ours will occasionally ask about eggs so I thought I’d include a few of the answers to the frequently asked questions (I stay refreshed because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[38,171,35,18,19,36],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-chickens","tag-eggs","tag-family","tag-farming","tag-hobbyfarm","tag-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em>Yep. In fact, that’s how it happens in, I’d say, most of the commercial egg \u201cbattery cages.\u201d See our egg in the dish on the left?\u00a0 Note the blastoderm. That’s the little concentric circle in the yolk. It’s indicative of a fertilized egg. The egg on the right is one I purchased from the grocery store (hadn’t done that in years).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/side-by-side_yolks1.jpg\" "\\"side-by-side_yolks\\"")
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\n<\/em>We feed our chickens \u201cfeed corn\u201d purchased from a local farmer and supplement with \u201clayer\u201d feed. They are free-rangers (given access to come and go as they please) and are outdoors from sun-up to sunset. I say:\u00a0 orange-yellow yolk equals happy hen.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/chalazae.jpg\" "\\"chalazae\\"")
The chalazae are on either side of the yolk, stretched tightly, to anchor the yolk to the shell. They recoil against the yolk and \u201csquiggle\u201d when the shell is broken. There is no harm in eating the chalazae.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>Unfortunately, I just read that some white shells are dyed brown (news to me?!) because consumers believe the brown shell means a healthier egg. I can’t find any evidence to support this. I will tell you a chicken with white lobes (they look like earlobes—if chickens had ears) will lay white eggs and a chicken with red lobes will lay brown eggs. There are a few exceptions to this. The most noteworthy is the green-blue egg laying Auracana (but that’s another blog post, altogether).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/white-lobed_hen.jpg\" "\\"white-lobed_hen\\"")
\u00a0![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/red-lobed_hen.jpg\" "\\"red-lobed_hen\\"")
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