Apologies if this is ridiculous and should be in no stupid questions but it just struck me
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1. Double yolks are normally only made by younger chickens.
2. There’s a pretty simple process called ‘candling’ which is now done with bright torches pressed to the shell to illuminate what’s inside. The process is normally to check for fertilised eggs (wouldn’t happen when there’s no male chickens present) it also shows for double yolks.
I imagine more advanced egg factories would candle every egg and reserve the double yolks for higher-cost sales.
Firstly the eggs are sorted by weight/size. Even on normal boxes you see the markings M, L or XL referring to the size of eggs. Double yolk eggs are usually much larger then other eggs. In addition to this the eggs are photographed with a strong light behind them which allow you to see some of the structures in the egg. You can therefore see things like double yolks in these photos and sort out these eggs.
If you shine a bright light through the egg you can see through it enough to detect two yolks.
Also the double yolked ones always end up in the largest category when eggs are sorted by size, so they wouldn’t even need to check that many to additionally sort.
I buy my eggs direct from a farmer and asked him last weekend!
Any hens under 14 weeks are guarenteed double yolks. It’s something to do with how fertile they are
Then from 14 – 20 weeks it xtra large eggs, that can sometimes be double yolks.
This week I ordered too late so had to get the extra large instead of double yolks. Apparently they were 16 weeks old – anyway – all were double yolks anyway
They’re bigger. A single chicken will lay pretty consistently sized eggs, with only a few grams variation. Then one day it lays an egg 20g larger than usual — that’s a double yolk. Say you’ve got 60, 61, 58, 60, 62, 59, 60, 80. The last one is a double yolk.
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You can tell too with a flashlight in a dark room. Essentially this process is automated. Pretty much only come from new layers so they also know where to be looking.
Have you ever held an egg up to the light?
What happens if a double yolk egg is fertilized and it hatches?
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