What are hatching eggs?
But before we talk about eating the eggs, let’s take a minute to talk about what makes a chicken lay an egg in the first place.
The process of an egg forming and being laid includes the formation of the yolk, white and shell of the egg. And the shape?
The egg’s unique design comes from the hen’s uterus; the egg is formed in its shape.
When it’s time for the egg to be released, a series of contractions occurs, causing the egg to move though the hen’s vagina and eventually come out through her vent and arrives, in most cases, in one piece underneath her. So, after all this time and effort, why don’t the eggs I get in the store have babies in them? The simple answer is, they aren’t fertilized.
If a hen has not been exposed to an able-body rooster (sexually mature male chicken), there is no chance of her eggs making the transformation from egg to chick. Most eggs found in your local grocery store will be unfertilized eggs, the exception being some local health food stores and cooperatives that may stock farm-fresh eggs that have roosters in the flocks. But fertilized or not, the eggs are still ok to eat!
The norm of finding only unfertilized eggs at your local grocery store is a recent change, stemming from the USDA’s policies. So, how do you know which eggs to eat? Any of them! Hatching eggs are eating eggs too! The only difference between the two are that one can hatch when exposed to the right conditions and the other will not. You will not notice the difference in taste, and will not even be able to tell a difference visually.
Now that you know what hatching eggs are, you might be curious about why farm fresh eggs are difference sizes, unlike eggs at the store.
