A lot of people expressed surprise at the idea of shell-less eggs. Since getting chickens, I have learned a LOT about How Eggs Are Made. And that the process isn’t nearly as error-proof as you might think if, like me, you’d spent your life eating store-bought eggs.
Most of the shell-less eggs get stepped on and ruptured before I can collect them. But I finally caught one in time to show you!
Think of an egg as being built on an assembly line. At one end of the assembly line, the ovaries drop an ovum onto the conveyor belt. The ovum turns into the yolk, and is the “seed” around which the egg is built.
As it moves down the conveyor belt, it gets a layer of egg white, some little white bungee cords called chalazae, two layers of membrane (an inner and an outer – the air space is in the gap between these two membranes), and finally the shell.
When a chicken is young, its conveyor belt doesn’t work very well. Sometimes it runs too fast, and an egg shoots right past a step. (That’s how we get shell-less eggs – it zips right past the “add shell” station.) Sometimes it runs slowly, or even stops for a few days. And sometimes – very rarely – it will actually run in reverse!
Reversals of the conveyor belt are how most of the REALLY weird eggs get made. For example, the egg-in-an-egg phenomenon, which recently took the internet by storm. An egg-in-an-egg happens when an egg gets all the way to the final step – then the conveyor belt reverses it all the way back to the beginning. More often an egg only goes back one or two steps before proceeding forwards again.
One of my favorite Weird Egg references – because it has lots of gross pictures – is at Brown Egg Blue Egg.
That website does indeed have gross pictures! Especially the egg photographed with the quarter, and especially the photos right below those. Ewww…
I grew up on a small farm with laying hens, so it’s high praise when I say that is the grossest thing I have ever seen–on the blue egg, brown egg site. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
The egg sans-shell is rather lovely, though. Are you still able to cook it or is it a dud?
I love how that woman says, “That poor bird.”
I love the idea of the conveyor belt! I am learning more about eggs than, frankly, I ever really wanted to know, but you know… it’s fascinating stuff. Weird and gross, but fascinating. I think the “egg song” you wrote about a few weeks ago was my favorite Interesting Fact. And this about the shell-less eggs… wow! Cool!
I have been trying to buy more local eggs lately because of you… I love opening the carton for the first time and seeing different sizes and colors of shells– not the same old uniform white or brown. And the yolks are much oranger than from the egg farms (which are often quite a pale yellow in comparison). Do you happen to know why? Is it just the feed they are given?
That’s weird enough, thankyouverymuch. Fascinating, but weird.
I can’t remember if the eggs at the cabin were any better than the eggs in the store. Is it like tomatos from the garden vs grocery store? Taste wise. Not in cost/satisfaction.
I remember making a similar thing in grade school by soaking a regular uncooked egg in vinegar for about a week (maybe less time?). We called it a “rubber egg”.
Two Silver Cats, I’m so glad you’ve gone to “real eggs”! They’re so much better AND better for you.
On the yolk color, my favorite quote is, “the question isn’t how do you make real eggs so bright orange, but how do you make factory/battery hen eggs so pale yellow?” It’s a nutritional additive, which they get naturally from eating grass and other greens, but it can also be added to their feed. I guess it costs too much for the factory farms, and the American public (myself included, until recently!) doesn’t seem to know any better, so no one demands proper yolks!
Makes you really question the quality of food we get at the grocery store overall!
you do not lie! Egg in an egg was awesome, gross egg pictures were really gross.
you know, twice! in my life I have bought cartons of eggs where 10 out of 12 were double yolks. Weird.
Not gonna lie, that egg weirds me out a little. But I still went to the other egg site and that just -eww. Best deviled eggs EVER came from my friend’s chickens
Oh, my, yes, gross indeed!
I suspect our chickens would eat anything weird before we ever saw it…
[...] to Big Egg. I knew something was up, having read strange egg tales from the Redshirt Knitting blog. Maybe an egg within an egg? (sidenote, you MUST click on that [...]