Our incredible edible eggs...
Did you know there is no nutritional difference in a brown egg and white egg. The color of the egg actually depends on the type of chicken that lays the egg and under most circumstances based on their ear color. A red eared chicken will lay a brown egg and a white eared chicken will lay a white egg. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule though; for example Arucana chickens lay pastel colored eggs. For some reason though it just doesn't seem like a farm egg unless it is brown.
No male needed!!! A hen will continue to lay an egg even though there is no male present - it just means that the eggs are not fertilized. You can tell if an egg is fertilized by a fleck that appears next to the yoke when the egg is broken. Since it is not the male, what is it that causes a hen to lay an egg? It's the sunlight. Sunlight stimulates a gland in the hens eyes which causes the hen to lay. Shorter daylight hours means less eggs.
When hens start to lay eggs, their systems are still trying to figure things out. What they sometimes produce are very fascinating eggs; very small, sometimes as small as a robin egg to very large, we have also had a triple yoker (ouch). Some other oddities are squishy shelled eggs similar to a turtle egg. Oddest yet was last year Madison collected a very large soft shelled egg that had a hard substance inside. Low and behold, there was a small egg inside of a large egg.
What do we do with all of this variation? We classify our eggs into sizes from small to jumbo and sell them at markets ranging from $3 / dozen to $4.50 / dozen. We keep the really odd ones!!! After a few weeks, their reproduction systems stabilize and we receive a consistent supply and size of egg.
An interesting tidbit of information from Mother Earth News magazine research regarding pastured free-range eggs:
1/3 less cholesterol than commercial eggs
1/4 less saturated fat
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
3 times more vitamin E
7 times more beta carotene
