Can someone please explain chicken eggs to me? What is the difference between the ones we eat vs the ones that hatch 🐣? Do chickens get pregnant? How do they lay eggs all the time ?

Question

Can someone please explain chicken eggs to me? What is the difference between the ones we eat vs the ones that hatch 🐣? Do chickens get pregnant? How do they lay eggs all the time ?

In: Biology

Answer 1

I’ve been raising chickens for almost 20 years. Hens lay an egg almost every day, whether they’re having sex or not.

If a hen and rooster hen have sex, that hen’s eggs will be fertile (meaning, they *could* hatch into baby chicks) for at least a few days. They’re still perfectly fine to eat, but if they were incubated for 21 days, they would hatch into baby chicks.

Eggs you buy at the store come from giant farms full of nothing but hens, there are no roosters around, so no sex is happening, meaning those eggs are not fertile and could never hatch. Roosters have no effect on egg production, thus they are not needed.